Watch Your Back—Crazed Vet Behind You!

I was prepared to write off the recent flap about a vet who found himself in a psychiatric ward after posting some strange comments on his Facebook page. He was put on a psychiatric hold by the local authorities after receiving information about the posts from DHS and the FBI. But after all, a judge reviewed the case, found no substantial evidence of any danger posed by the vet, and ordered his immediate release. So why should I care?

After reading the comments posted by Marine vet Brandon J. Raub, I was convinced that it was a matter of extreme overreach by the authorities, and probably a violation of his First Amendment free speech rights. He said, among other things, that “a day of reckoning is coming,” and “sharpen my axe, I'm here to sever heads.” Not exactly dinner table conversation, but I've probably said worse things right here on this blog (the most frequent being “I hate Barack Obama”). But the system worked, it was an isolated incident, and Raub is free to move on.

I'm not big on conspiracy theories, as we've discussed multiple times on this site. But that doesn't mean there aren't some conspiracies, or that like-thinking people can't act in ways that take on the form of conspiracy. One of the leitmotifs of liberal thinking is that all returning vets are either crazy or about to go crazy. They served their country under horrifying conditions, and it made them nuts. DHS has gone so far as to assert that all Iraq and Afghanistan vets should be watched carefully for signs of irrational or insane behavior since they could easily slip into madness and commit a terrorist act.

After doing some further research, I have decided that the Raub incident may not be so isolated after all. Raub was represented by the Rutherford Institute (think ACLU for conservatives). The FBI had conducted an interview with Raub, and decided that his views and his posts were “ominous.” The local authorities agreed, and acted on that information. But the judge found that there was simply nothing that fit the rules of clear and present danger, or clear and convincing evidence of a threat. He further found that Raub's comments and posts were not sufficient evidence that he was a danger to himself or others, the most basic of reasons to place a citizen under a psychiatric hold.

Except for a future civil suit against the authorities for misuse of their powers, that might seem to be the end of it. But the attorney for Raub asserts that there are twenty cases he knows of involving psychiatric holds or threats of holds just in the same county where Raub was detained. John Whitehead of the Rutherford Institute says that he has been contacted by veterans nationwide who have had similar experiences with authorities attempting to have them declared mentally ill. How much of this is evidentiary and how much anecdotal remains to be seen. After all, some vets are crazy, just like people in every other stratum of society. But the numbers either harassed or “held” seem to reflect a dangerous trend.

One advocate of the religion of peace shouts Allahu akbar and opens fires on his fellow soldiers, and the liberals simply can't figure out what the underlying cause of the violence is. But angry vets who merely criticize their government's namby-pamby attitude toward terrorism and promotion of ideas foreign to American tradition in very colorful language are now subject to psychiatric holds.

In her April 2009 memorandum on the state of domestic terrorism (“intelligence assessment”), Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano specifically listed returning vets as potential terrorists. Asked about it recently, Napolitano didn't waver a bit, and said she stands by the assessment. Since that memo was issued, civil commitments of vets for psychiatric problems have accelerated rapidly. I'm far from ready to declare that there's a conspiracy involved here, but the like thinking of DHS and the FBI and the ease with which vets are detained based on “ominous mental health assessment” information provided to local authorities is certainly something for us to be concerned with. It may be coincidence, or it may be a pattern.

Genuine threats are prosecutable, as they should be. Even the First Amendment has its exceptions. But the expression of anger and frustration at the government accompanied by intemperate wording is not and should not be prosecutable. Those in government positions who wish to squelch free speech know that. Still, in at least in some cases, they seem to have taken a page out of the Soviet psikhushka program whereby dissidents were placed in psychiatric facilities so that they could be “re-educated” and their “crazy” views discredited with the public. “Crazy war vets” have already been pre-qualified by DHS as potential terrorists, so isn't this a great way to silence them?

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Future Democrats Of America

Two recent developments highlight the determination of Barack Obama and his fellow Democrats to increase the rolls of the Democratic Party by making illegal immigrants legal. First, the Obama administration via the Department of Homeland Security, intends to "review the cases" of 300,000 illegals who have already been ordered deported.

Second, in support of this action using his Constitution-skirting executive power, Obama plans to grant amnesty to many of the illegals in that group, among others. These two actions are intertwined, and together comprise another stealth attack on the powers of Congress which has consistently defeated the left's DREAM Act. Still, this action goes beyond the intent of the DREAM Act in that it's a blanket form of amnesty where the DREAM Act was a ploy to keep college illegals in the country.

Why now? Well, among Latino voters, support for Obama has declined from 85% to 49% in just over a year. The assumption in the Obama administration is that all legal Latino immigrants and naturalized Hispanic-Americans support illegal immigration. The White House-Capitol Democrats have decided that since they can't get amnesty in through the front-door, they had better do something quickly to restore their popularity among Hispanic voters.

It has not occurred to them that Latinos are among those most negatively impacted by the Obama failure to energize the economy and their reasons for abandoning him may have very little to do with the issue of immigration. Illegal immigration itself has shown a small decline since new jobs are few and far between. Even among the nearly-monolithic Obama black vote, his numbers are slipping, and that also has nothing to do with immigration.

DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano sent a letter to the DREAM Act Democrats stating: "From a law enforcement and public safety perspective, DHS enforcement resources must continue to be focused on our highest priorities [creating new Democrats?]. Doing otherwise hinders our public safety mission--clogging immigration court dockets and diverting DHS enforcement resources away from individuals who pose a threat to public safety." Oh, spare me!

First, if the issue is limited resources, why waste those resources on illegals who have already been ordered deported? Sure, that would sweep up a large number of criminals whose only crime is being here illegally and haven't committed any other crimes yet, but it would also spare the Department the time and effort required to segregate out those illegals who have committed other crimes. Every hour spent reviewing each and every case already ordering deportation is an hour wasted in going forward with future investigations and deportations.

Napolitano says the 300,000 cases will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. In other words, a limited number of federal employees looking one at a time at 300,00 cases. That number alone says there's a major problem, and reviewing each case will make a bad situation far worse. Admittedly, some of these cases are at the final stages, and have not yet come to a final order of deportation, but that doesn't change the fact that 300,000 cases will have to be reviewed, leaving no time to process the thousands of new cases arriving at ICE and DHS.

Second, this is a purely political move. There is no legal or constitutional justification for this action. The claim that it is a security matter is pure nonsense. The administration has been taking heat from irredentists and open-borders advocates since it recently bragged that it had deported more illegals than the Bush administration over a comparable period of time. Taking voluntary self-deportation after arrest into account, that was a simple lie. But this attempt at proving its steadfastness in enforcing immigration law backfired. It convinced nobody who wants the law enforced, and it angered those who were already suspicious of Obama immigration efforts that looked very much like enforcement.

Napolitano herself inadvertently admitted that the political heat was the basis of her actions. Even the liberal Los Angeles Times saw through the subterfuge, saying: "They announced the review as the Obama administration has sought to counter criticism that it has been too harsh in its deportation policies." Since most open-border opponents think that the administration has been too lax, it is obvious that this move wasn't designed to satisfy their demands for true enforcement of immigration law. This move is not only reprehensible on its face, but it is an intentional attack on the power of Congress to enact immigration law.

The ploy is working within the Democrat immigration left. Says open-borders advocate Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Illinois): "This is the Barack Obama I have been waiting for and that Latino and immigrant voters helped put in office to fight for sensible immigration policies. Focusing scarce resources on deporting serious criminals, gang bangers, and drug dealers and setting aside non-criminals with deep roots in the US until Congress fixes our laws is the right thing to do." Which non-criminals? Surely he doesn't mean those immigrants whose first act was to commit the crime of entering the United States illegally.

One of the arguments that has been used to claim that this action and the DREAM Act were not purely political is that even after the stealth amnesty, these people are not voters anyway. Aw, hooey. First of all, in many Democratic enclaves they're already voting. Lax registration rules in other states enables them to vote semi-legally. And the real purpose is to create future voters for the Democratic Party that enabled them to turn their illegal status into legal status by a simple wave of the Obama hand.

Immigration reform is one of the most important issues to be handled by the next administration and the next Congress. Those illegals who have volunteered to serve in the US armed forces during a multi-front war should be given special consideration (particularly those here illegally solely because they were brought here as young children by parents who entered illegally). But blanket amnesty, no matter how disguised and what it is called is both foolish and dangerous. To top it off, Obama's executive order is another power-grabbing end-run around the Constitution.

In response to our featured placard-carrier: "If you're here illegally, you are a criminal."
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Deja Vu All Over Again

The map of the area surrounding the epicenter of the horrendous Haitian earthquake indicates the borders of a sovereign nation. America is likewise a sovereign nation, with borders and immigration laws. Upwards of 200,000 Haitians have violated those borders and those laws, and Janet Napolitano's Department of Homeland Security has just moved those illegal immigrants closer to amnesty.

Napolitano's Department of Homeland Security, the Clinton State Secretariat, and the great one, Barack Obama, all support amnesty as a general principle for illegal aliens. Following the advice of "let no crisis go unexploited," a whole new set of illegal immigrants is suddenly on the fast track for citizenship as a result of the crisis in Haiti.

Before proceeding, let's get something straight, lest I be accused of being uncaring. The disaster in Haiti is almost unparalleled in the history of the western hemisphere. Nobody deserves this kind of horror, despite the ravings of Pat Robertson and Danny Glover. As the most humanitarian nation in world history, America has a natural duty to render all the aid it can possibly come up with. Simply as moral human beings we have a duty to help people in times of trouble when we have the resources and they don't.

What we don't have is a duty to throw out $100 million of the beleaguered taxpayers' money as a reward to the corrupt Haitian government for its failures. Obama has already done exactly that. Billions of American dollars have already been thrown down that rathole since the Clinton administration. Little of it has ever been accounted for, and nearly none ever got to the Haitian people. The Haitian government was warned incessantly by US government seismologists that Haiti was overdue for a major, devastating earthquake. Much of the money sent over the past ten years was to be devoted to rebuilding infrastructure, building or retrofitting hospitals to stand a major temblor, and medical and emergency food services. It took less than twenty-four hours after the quake to realize that none of that money had ever gotten out of the pockets of the crooked politicians.

None of this obviates the need for the swift action taken by the United States government to assist the victims. Undeserved cash awards from the grandstanding Obama administration aside, the relief efforts will take weeks or months, huge expenditures of time, logistics, physical labor, man-hours and funds to pay for it all. Our costs will be in the multi-millions of dollars, and we won't pinch pennies to get there. And it's the right thing to do.

However, using the crisis in Haiti is a lousy excuse for side-tracking American immigration law, creating a whole new class of "legal illegals," and setting up a previously unimportant class of border criminals for a future amnesty. The legal vehicle for accomplishing this was the granting of an eighteen-month Temporary Protected Status to Haitians who were here illegally at the time of and prior to the earthquake. Napolitano blithely states "It's sort of a time-out for Haitians in the United States who can begin to work and have some resources to send back to Haiti itself." I'm curious exactly what kind of work they're going to find during the big recession, but I suppose government work is always an option.

Napolitano plans on handing "intermediate immigration status" to an illegal population approaching a quarter of a million people. Her advisers told her that Haiti is in such bad shape it cannot accept any deportees. Democratic Senator Bill Nelson of Florida concurs (of course). Says Nelson, "It's the right thing to do. Haitian immigrants already in the U.S. will not only be able to make money to support themselves, but also to send remittances to their suffering families back in Haiti." Perhaps Nelson thinks there are 200,000 openings for poll workers at ACORN or union reps at SEIU.

Current law provides for such temporary status. But the authors never expected it to apply to such a large illegal population, and there are other avenues for protecting the illegals until the situation is stabilized in Haiti. DHS could simply go to Congress and ask for temporary legislation to cover the specific situation without creating a new "working class" to be protected by broad amnesty later. That could include a "special work visa" solely for the Haitians rather than the current plan to give them "temporary work visas" covered by more general law that regularly leads to legalization of previously illegal immigrants who have not complied with all the other requirements of naturalization.

Compassion and sympathy are for individuals, not governments. Creation of a massive new population of protected illegals is humane (which governments should be), but it is also foolish and a gross attempt to grandstand a large group of illegals into sympathetic permanent resident status. It allows an eighteen month window for the pro-illegal immigration, pro-amnesty crowd to develop the usual mantra of "they've worked hard, paid their taxes, and now they deserve instant citizenship." As with the Latin American illegals, we will now be expected to add the Haitians to the crowd whose first act in the United States was to break our law.

As always, we have precious little intelligence on exactly who all these illegals are, what they stand for, how they got here, and whether they have dangerous or terrorist intentions toward the country that negligently allowed them to arrive and stay here in the first place. So it easily follows that the hopelessly incompetent head of a major intelligence agency should grant them immediate legal status. DHS and ICE need to keep a close watch on these unknowns. Napolitano has already stated that if Haiti isn't back to "normal" at the end if the eighteen month period, she could simply extend the legal status for another eighteen months. Haiti will likely never be "normal," but that shouldn't be the determining factor in deporting the illegals at the earliest opportunity. That will not happen during an Obama administration.

FOOTNOTE: The Wall Street Journal editorial staff disagrees with me. It takes the ambiguous "moral obligation" proferred by Napolitano at face value without discussing a way to allow the illegals to stay without creating a whole new amnesty underclass. However, they were nice enough to point out that Haiti's corrupt government received $1.65 billion in aid from the outside in 2006 alone. And the results? See above. As a financial publication I would have thought they would at least question last week's $100 million grandstanding gift from Obama to the Haitian government. The Journal staff referred to this as "temporary amnesty." Temporary? Amnesty? Where have we heard all of this before?
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Look--It's The White House! Who's In Charge?

If you're not using a large screen, click on the picture so you can play "how many times do the words 'White House' appear in this picture?" Channeling Harry Truman, the President recently announced "the buck stops with me," but apparently somebody forgot to tell Janet Napolitano.

The picture was taken nearly two weeks after Napolitano first announced that she had the situation stemming from the Flight 253 underwear bombing fiasco and near-disaster completely under control. She had declared security procedures to be working perfectly. That was shortly before she said that security procedures were a mess, and just before the president announced there had been a "systemic failure." The picture apparently demonstrates that Napolitano is still very much in the president's favor, even now.

On Thursday evening, the president declared that the battle for control over the White House had resulted in perfected security procedures, and dammit, he's in charge. He even took personal responsibility for the US intelligence failure, at least according to another one of the residents of the White House, ABC News. Of course there's no mention of any change in procedures, but he took responsibility, didn't he? What a man! What next? A president who thinks he's the commander-in-chief?

Quickly retreating to his "can't we all just get along?" mode , he also announced that no officials would be fired (see Napolitano, above). He almost seemed to take pride in his humility (if such a thing is possible) in announcing the failure, while completely forgetting to reassure the nation by laying out any plans he might have for correcting the systemic problem he acknowledged. Frankly, I think he should borrow an antique guillotine from France and send heads rolling all over D.C. and the immediate environs. He's an amateur bowler, after all, and he should be tossing those heads at every agency and agency executive that was so busy protecting his or her own fiefdom that they didn't notice the most obvious terrorist since the Green Goblin boarding a plane in Amsterdam.

Obama actually spoke the dread word "enemy" and aimed the epithet at Al Qaeda, after first using the words "terrorist" and "war." Well, that's a start, and at least he was sophisticated enough to refer to "Al Qaeda affiliates" in recognition of the fact that the original organization has decentralized and metastasized. If he ever recognizes that the enemy is not just Al Qaeda and its affiliates, but rather worldwide Islamofascism (foreign and domestic), he'll be on to something. Still, though he can't seem to help himself most of the time, for once Obama didn't note a gazillion times that the watch lists failed because they were put into place under the Bush administration.

On his first outing as a movie director, actor/dancer Gene Kelly was chided for his lack of directorial skills. After a scene was shot, and he wasn't happy with it, he would give the actors another opportunity. When they asked what he wanted them to do this time, he is said to have responded "do it better." It appears that Obama's leadership contains the same skills. The New York Times thinks that Obama told the security agencies to "do things faster." The Christian Science Monitor reports that Obama has told his agencies to "keep doing what they are doing, only faster and in a more coherent manner." All the MSM publications reported a "change in tone," but none were able to point out a change in substance.

Gene Kelly got better at what he was doing, and learned how to give directions and set the stage for movie success. But there, only a movie was at stake. Today, we have a president who is simply incapable of giving direct orders, clarifying what he wants done, and making sure that it gets done quickly and efficiently. A great deal more than a mere movie is at stake here. The lives of American citizens and the safety of the entire nation are at stake, and the big chief has finally awakened to the fact that we do have an actual enemy. The big question now is "when will he start directing?" Or maybe the real question is "is he even capable of it?"
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Need More Democrats? Then Just Endanger National Security

We have just gone through the eighth anniversary of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. In the wake of that tragic mass murder, a bipartisan Congress formed the 9/11 Commission both to investigate the attack and to propose methods by which future attacks could be prevented. Some good came out of it. One remedy was the REAL ID Act.

The REAL ID Act established strong standards for state-issued driver's licenses and identification cards. This included all of the most state-of-the-art enhancements to those cards available. The enhancements include eventual use of holographic images on every card, and a magnetic strip capable of protecting the security of the card and data privacy. And in order to obtain one of these cards, the applicant is required to demonstrate proof of citizenship, or sufficient verifiable information for the issuing authority to verify citizenship independently. Those legally allowed in the United States, but not citizens, would be allowed to have an ID card, but included in the information in the security strip there would be information proving the person has entered and remained in the United States legally.

As we predicted awhile back, the Obama administration is going to start slipping dangerous but low-profile legislative proposals to Congress while the nation's attention is on Obamacare and Cap and Tax. Secretary of Homeland Insecurity Janet Napolitano has put together her wish list of things she thinks are too cost-ineffective or redundant. Among them is REAL ID. The program, although not yet fully implemented in every state, has been a success. No terrorists have boarded an American plane successfully since 9/11. But absence is not proof. So how do we know it works?

The Act produced a very successful side-effect. One of the major concerns of the 9/11 Commission was terrorists sneaking across the borders and obtaining or manufacturing fake IDs. Since the Act was already accomplishing one purpose, the legislation covered another one--employers in certain categories are required to check REAL IDs for proof of citizenship or work visas. Scores of illegals have been caught and deported because of their attempts to duplicate REAL IDs unsuccessfully. And every illegal (and that doesn't just mean Mexican immigrants by any means) is a potential terrorist.

Napolitano has plenty of cover for her willingess to put America at greater risk again. Hard-pressed states have complained about the cost (couldn't we use some of those billions in unused stimulus money to defray the cost?). "Civil rights" activists naturally complain that it's racist. Scofflaw corporations complain that it interferes with their ability to hire low-wage unskilled labor. And the average citizen either doesn't know about the Act, or has forgotten about it. Truly effective laws do have a way of slipping out of the public consciousness.

So here's what's now before Congress. It's called the PASS ID resolution. It would roll back every meaningful portion of the REAL ID Act. It removes the requirement of states exchanging information on holders of their respective driver's licenses and IDs. It will negate the current portion of the Act which requires that upon implementation of the Act in each state, airlines must require the use of a REAL ID cards or an acceptable alternative (such as a diplomatic passport) before being allowed through the boarding gate. It would eliminate the "no tamper" security portion of the data strip. And the proposed legislation even further weakens its own inadequate provisions by extending the time for the states to comply with the pathetic PASS ID.

No security device is ever entirely secure or tamper-proof. But they can become sufficiently sophisticated that the number of people who would be capable of defeating them decreases exponentially. And the more sophisticated, the more expensive, thereby eliminating another large swath of potential terrorists being able to get past the system. I'll take 90% secure over 10% or 15% secure any day in the week. And before anybody screams "National ID, the government's out to get us," REAL ID standardizes high-security procedures already in place and improves them, but the final authority remains with the states. And frankly, I want the federal government to know the moment someone produces a fake or inadequate ID rather than a REAL ID-quality ID.

As I've said over and over again, if we even take a quick nap, this administration will exploit our inattention to increase government control of our lives and our economy while at the same time reducing our ability to defend ourselves and ferret out terrorists. They will continue to fund useless make-work projects and radical "community organizers." But protecting our very lives is too expensive. Still believe that Obamacare won't ration medical treatment?

Side Note: For those of you who may be unaware of this, after the most recent round of indictments and convictions for voter fraud, the Bureau of the Census has sent a formal notice to ACORN that its services will no longer be considered to be in the national interest for conducting the next census. Bye Bye ACORN
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Homeland Insecurity

"Today, I am proud to make two key personnel announcements for the U. S. Department of Homeland Security. President Obama is nominating David Heyman as Assistant Secretary of Policy and I am appointing Arif Alikhan as Assistant Secretary for Policy Development." With those words, DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano put American national security at further risk.

President Obama and his immediate subordinates are continuing a slow descent into accommodationism and false confidence. Starting with a Secretary of Homeland Security who believes in easy immigration and easier citizenship, particularly for illegals, the various departments charged with protecting Americans from foreign and domestic terrorism are being peopled with hacks, one-worlders, appeasers, and worst of all, appointees of dubious loyalty to America.

David Heyman is more of the same in that he appears on the surface to be a well-organized and logical hands-on executive. He has lengthy experience in real-world implementation of security schemes, and is knowledgeable in the area of utilizing local and area-wide citizens in major emergencies rather than relying on state or federal agencies to do the work quickly and efficiently. He was even quite critical of FEMA's handling of the Katrina disaster, and had high praise for the authorities across the state border from Louisiana for their quick and localized action using local citizens and resources.

So far, so good. But Heyman is not being appointed as an administrator of the nuts and bolts of putting citizen groups together to act locally in a crisis. He has been appointed to work in the policy division--quite a different thing. All the planning in the world does no good if you're planning for the wrong disaster. Heyman is a professor with a very academic view of world affairs. His view of the Middle East is more the Chamberlain than the Churchill type. More Carter than Reagan. It's hard to plan an emergency rapid reaction when you are concentrating on planning how to convince the enemy not to attack in the first place. And Heyman is one who believes in international cooperation to resolve all national problems, area-wide negotiation, and denial of any ill will toward us from the Arab/Muslim world.

Planning for tornadoes and hurricanes is all well and good, unless you're in California and the "enemy" is earthquake or fire. Heyman bases his policy on the traditional concepts of national governments conducting clearly-defined wars. None of his policy papers indicate that he is willing to recognize the reality of present day non-governmental terrorism, religious fantacism as a factor in creating terror, and asymmetrical warfare. Nevertheless, as inadequate as Heyman's worldview may be, he is not disloyal, and does seem to believe in America's right to survive and protect itself. He just can't see the real threat in front of his face.

The second appointment of the day is considerably more troubling. Arif Alikhan is a devout Sunni Muslim. Let's make no mistake, there are no valid religious tests for holding office in America, nor should there be. But that doesn't mean we should close our eyes to what appointees say, what they believe in regard to religion and the state, and which social and political organizations they support.

Here's Napolitano's introduction to Mr. Alikhan: "Arif comes from Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigoso's office, where he served as Deputy Mayor for Homeland Security and Public Safety. As a key adviser to the Mayor, he has led the City's efforts to develop homeland security, emergency management and law enforcement initiatives, including operational oversight of Los Angeles Police, Fire, and Emergency Management departments. Pretty impressive, huh?

However, Napolitano neglected a few facts about him. Alikhan was instrumental in completely disbanding the Police Department's personnel and trashing plans for monitoring suspected Muslim terrorists in the Los Angeles area. Alikhan is an associate of the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC). The group was founded in 1988 as an outgrowth of several other radical Muslim groups. It attempts to be the civilized face of more militiant activism. It describes itself as "a public service agency working for the civil rights of American Muslims, for the integration of Islam into American pluralism, and for a positive, constructive relationship between American Muslims and their representatives."

It sounds innocent enough, until you know the rest of it. Its senior adviser is Maher Hathout, who has close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and who espouses Saudi-style Wahhabism. Despite its professed desire to work closely with other religious communities, in 2000 the Council severed its ties with the Jewish community as a result of the second Intifada and issued harsh, one-sided condemnations of Israel for its response to the Palestinian violence. It was active in attempts to repeal the Patriot Act, working hand-in-hand with the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the American Muslim Council and the American Muslim Alliance. The organizations espouse the belief that the Patriot Act was designed solely as an assault on the civil rights of Muslims. And MPAC opposed vehemently the invasions of both Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as the search for Osama bin Laden and the al Qaeda leaders.

The Council claims that extremists in Islam are no more numerous in total or per capita than in any other faith. It holds Israel solely responsible for the "pattern of violence" in the Middle East, and declares Hezbollah to be a group of freedom fighters pursuing a liberation movement. Although Alikhan has not publicly espoused these positions since moving into government service, still he has not disavowed them or those who promote them. And we are to expect that a man such as this will influence administration policy in a logical manner, recognizing his duty to protect American national security above all else.

It's not just in the homeland security area that Obama's appointments have been dangerous to American security. The two above are part of a series of frighteningly naive appointments that the Obama administration has pushed. The President's appointments mentioned below (only a partial list) include only one other Muslim, lest anyone think this is an anti-Muslim column. It also demonstrates that one need not be Muslim to be wilfully blind to Islamic fanaticism. By their deeds shall ye know them.

How about Kareem Shora, appointed by Napolitano to the Homeland Security Advisory Council? He is the Executive Director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC). Damascus-born Shora is a known associate of anti-Israel professor Rashid Khalili (who is in turn a friend of one Barack Obama), both of whom have praised jihadists as heroes and fight any reference to Hamas as a terrorist group. The President of ADC, Hamzi Moghrabi, stated: "I will not call Hamas a terrorist organization. I mean I know many people in Hamas. They are very respectable. I don't believe that Hamas as an organization is a violent organization." He also said: "I find it shocking that one would include Hezbollah in an inventory of Middle East terrorist groups." Hezbollah is second only to al Qaeda in the number of Americans it has killed in terrorist attacks.

ADC has also actively opposed all anti-terrorism measures such as watch lists, background check delays for visas and comprehensive screening of Middle East countries or specific individuals labeled as possible national security threats. ADC openly celebrated the release of Hezbollah prisoners in Israel in 2004, praising them as "heroes." I guess we know what kind of advice Shora will be giving Secretary Napolitano.

Adviser General Merrill McPeak says American Jewish voters prevent the U. S. from a constructive role in bringing about peace in the Middle East. Robert Malley has urged an imposed settlement on Israel which requires Israel to negotiate with Hamas. NSC adviser Samantha Power advocates imposition of terms on Israel by the U. S. unilaterally. George Mitchell, who in 2000 called for more concessions from Israel before he would demand that Palestinians fulfill their already existing, unfulfilled Oslo obligations. Daniel Kurtzer directly blames Israel for the failure of the 2000 Camp David accords.

And then there's the amazingly devious and chameleon-like Dennis Ross, who is a vocal supporter of Israel and friend of Rahm Emmanuel. Ross even held the Palestinian Authority largely responsible for the 2000 failure that other administration officials blame on Israel. He thereafter repeated his position that Israel could not negotiate with terrorist organizations. Right up untl he became an Obama insider. He now says that he was right all along, but what is different now is that Yasser Arafat was unable to make peace, but his current successor Mahmoud Abbas can. Well, the Bush administration failed at that little gem, so why not let the Obama administration do the same thing? The only difference in approach is that Bush gave the Palestinian Authority $600 million, while so far Obama has given the P.A. $900 million. As we all know, the only reason a peace plan fails is lack of funding. Ross is now Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for the Central Region (including Palestine, Israel and much of Syria and Lebanon).

Whether it's protection of American troops and personnel in the Middle East, or American citizens at home, Obama has shown a strong predilection for continuing the use of weak old-timers in office, or bringing them back for the sake of appearances. But at least they put up a show of believing that Israel deserves to exist, and Americans at home and abroad deserve to live. His new people who are expected to lead the charge tend to be very weak on American homeland defense and foreign intervention, and some are openly hostile. Those who came in as strong advocates for American national security quickly convert. A fish rots from the head down.

With people like this in charge, Secretary Napolitano is going to need much more than a simple metal detector to protect her and the rest of us from terrorist attacks.
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