Author: NewMexiKen

Maureen Dowd in Wednesday’s Times:

Maybe it’s corporate racial profiling, but I don’t want foreign companies, particularly ones with links to 9/11, running American ports.

What kind of empire are we if we have to outsource our coastline to a group of sheiks who don’t recognize Israel, in a country where money was laundered for the 9/11 attacks? And that let A. Q. Kahn, the Pakistani nuclear scientist, smuggle nuclear components through its port to Libya, North Korea and Iran?

It’s mind-boggling that President Bush ever agreed to let an alliance of seven emirs be in charge of six of our ports. Although, as usual, Incurious George didn’t even know about it until after the fact. (Neither did Rummy, even though he heads one of the agencies that green-lighted the deal.)

William Neikirk writes in the Chicago Tribune’s Washington blog: “Sometimes a visit by a president can change a lot of things — such as keeping your job. Just ask some 32 people who had been fired last week from their high-paying positions at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colo.”It appeared that all was lost for these workers until President Bush decided to visit the laboratory on Tuesday to promote his proposals for renewable energy (which will require a good bit of new research by this very institution). “Suddenly, the earth moved. Suddenly, sympathy for the plight of these victims soared. Suddenly, it dawned on someone in the White House that the president might be coming to Colorado with a mixed message, talking about the promise of renewable energy while slashing some of the very people working on it.”

Dan Froomkin

From Jane Hamsher at firedoglake:

I don’t know if anyone remembers the ABC news story from September, 2002 when they tested the security of American ports by attempting — with frightening success — to smuggle depleted uranium into the country via the port of New York. They did the same thing again, this time through the port of Los Angeles, in 2003.

One would think that the response of a Homeland Security Department that actually cared about protecting the country from the great fear they are always so quick invoke would be to take measures to make sure that the ports were strengthened such that real terrorists who actually attempted this could not succeed.

What did the Bush administration do?

They began an investigation of ABC news for violation of felony smuggling laws. Intimidate the whistleblowers. It’s the mafia’s stock in trade, too.

I remember this very clearly because it really terrified me. One of the reasons I really came to admire John Kerry was due to the fact that he had an actual plan (can you imagine) to strengthen the big holes in the US port security system. Because contrary to what wingnuttia would have you believe, liberals don’t want to hand over the US to the terrorists. We just want real measures to be taken to secure the country, as opposed to the millions upon millions of dollars wasted in meaningless measures that do nothing to protect national security while a lot of empty rhetoric masks the true intent their efforts: namely, funnel big bucks to your buddy. Then they stomp around and pretend like they actually did something.

Anyone who thinks that BushCo. has done more to make this country secure isn’t “tough on terror.” They’re just a bunch of marks.

Now George Bush wants rake in the big bucks by outsourcing control of our ports to a country that has been a key transfer point for illegal shipments of nuclear components to Iran, North Korea and Lybia, and he’s so accustomed to screaming “look fast, the boogyman’s over there!” while he lifts your wallet he thinks nobody will notice this time either.

Is the the game finally over? Are the Bush cultists finally coming to realize what we’ve known all along — that this bunch of crooks is all about making money and only about making money, national security be damned?

Let’s hope so, because the wingnuts have been the major impediment to true national security for years. It’s high time the scales fell off their eyes for all our sakes.

If you don’t know what this is all about, the Bush Administration is proposing to contract the management of six American ports to a company from the United Arab Emirates. Bush, who has vetoed not one bill in more than five years, promised today to veto any attempt by Congress to undermine this deal.

The following happened in the United States of America on Feb. 9 of this year.

The scene is the Little Falls branch of the Montgomery County Public Library in Bethesda, Md. Business is going on as usual when two men in uniform stride into the main reading room and call for attention. Then they make an announcement: It is forbidden to use the library’s computers to view Internet pornography.

As people are absorbing this, one of the men challenges a patron about a Web site he is visiting and asks the man to step outside. At this point, a librarian intervenes and calls the uniformed men aside. A police officer is summoned. The men leave. It turns out they are employees of the county’s Department of Homeland Security and were operating way outside their authority.

From a column by Leonard Pitts

Any use of the term “homeland” just makes NewMexiKen shiver.