Tag Archives: Homeland Security Department

Does This Make Sense?

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On Tuesday, The Washington Times posted an article about vaccine mandates.

The article notes:

The Biden administration allowed hundreds of Afghans from last year’s airlift to disappear into American communities without getting COVID-19 or other vaccinations, an inspector general has revealed.

The information was released as the Biden administration was starting the process to fire government workers who didn’t get the coronavirus shots — including some employees at Homeland Security, the department that allowed the Afghans to go free.

Investigators couldn’t say exactly how many Afghans avoided vaccination. They said the Homeland Security Department reported that fewer than 600 walked away without the shots in the early weeks of the evacuation, but dodgy records made it impossible for the inspector general to evaluate that claim.

Others walked out of military base camps before final clearance — a process that was supposed to ensure they were vaccinated, as well as acclimated to their new homes.

“Some Afghan evacuees independently departed safe havens without completing medical requirements,” the inspector general concluded — though again, because of poor records, it was impossible to say how many evaded the vaccines.

Actually, I am not as concerned about the evacuees that departed safe havens early without completing medical requirements as I am concerned with how many evacuees left before they could be accurately screened for ties to terrorism.

The article notes:

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas used his parole powers to clear 77,000 Afghans into the U.S. during the airlift.

The inspector general said 8,600 evacuees never made it to the camps set up to process them at eight military bases in the U.S. Another 11,700 went to the camps but walked off without full processing.

Homeland Security created a task force to try to track down the evacuees who never made it through processing, but even there, the government bungled, the inspector general said. The task force tracked down only Afghans who walked away from Washington Dulles International Airport. It didn’t track down the thousands who went to the military base camps but departed without completing their processing.

Homeland Security insisted the task force was fulfilling the exact mission it was given, but the inspector general said the administration’s documents showed that the task force was supposed to be tracking down everyone.

At the time of the evacuees’ arrival, the U.S. had a near-blanket policy at international airports requiring visitors — those arriving without immigrant visas in hand — to prove they had been vaccinated.

Those who came in on parole, as well as asylum-seekers and refugees, were exempted.

It is an unsettling thought that this many Afghans are roaming around America without having been vetted.

Some Of Our Congressmen Are Paying Attention

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This video was posted at the Washington Examiner the last week of August:

The video shows House Homeland Security Committee chairman Pete King, R-N.Y. questioning Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano about the recent visit by Hani Nour Eldin to the White House where he met with high-ranking Obama administration and State Department officials. Mr. Eldin is a member of the recently elected Egyptian parliament. He is also a member of a group designated as a terrorist group by the United States government.

The article reports Ms. Napolitano’s answers to Rep. King’s questions about letting a known terrorist into the White House:

“I think we have to add more nuance to that,” she said when King mentioned that Eldin is part of a designated foreign terrorist organization. “We have to know what the group was. Is it now a political party that is running the government of a country that has strong ties to the United States?” She added that he went through three stages of vetting and “everyone who looked at this person felt confident that he was not a security risk to the White House or to the United States.”

My question after watching the video is, “Didn’t anyone bother to check his Facebook page?” I find the lack of research amazing.

As someone who is not prone to nuance, I think this is nuts. One of the things Mr. Eldin did while at the White House was ask for the release of another terrorists–the Blind Sheik. Enjoy the video.

 

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I Am Not A Terrorist

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I am a conservative. I believe in limited government. I agree with most of the ideas of the Tea Party. I am not, nor am I in danger of becoming, a terrorist. I am a little old lady who remembers when autumn meant the smell of burning leaves, gasoline was $.30 a gallon, and we sang patriotic songs and prayed in school. (I went to elementary school in the south, and we sang Dixie a lot!)

However, the Department of Homeland Security sees people who believe what I believe as a threat.

The Department of Homeland Security publication, LaFree, Gary, and Bianca Bersani. “Hot Spots of Terrorism and Other Crimes in the United States, 1970 to 2008,” Final Report to Human Factors/Behavioral Sciences Division, Science and Technology Directorate, U.S. Department of Homeland Security. College Park, MD: START, 2012., includes the following statement about potential terrorists:

Extreme Right-Wing: groups that believe that one’s personal and/or national “way of life” is under attack and is either already lost or that the threat is imminent (for some the threat is from a specific ethnic, racial, or religious group), and believe in the need to be prepared for an attack either by participating in paramilitary preparations and training or survivalism. Groups may also be fiercely nationalistic (as opposed to universal and international in orientation), anti-global, suspicious of centralized federal authority, reverent of individual liberty, and believe in conspiracy theories that involve grave threat to national sovereignty and/or personal liberty.

…Religious: groups that seek to smite the purported enemies of God and other evildoers, impose strict religious tenets or laws on society (fundamentalists), forcibly insert religion into the political sphere (e.g., those who seek to politicize religion, such as Christian Reconstructionists and Islamists), and/or bring about Armageddon (apocalyptic millenarian cults; 2010: 17). For example, Jewish Direct Action, Mormon extremist, Jamaat-al-Fuqra, and Covenant, Sword and the Arm of the Lord (CSA) are included in this category.

I don’t mean to be difficult, but there is only one religion on that list that has been consistently involved in terrorism. My experience with Christian fundamentalists has been that when someone commits violence in the name of Jesus, he is condemned by the Christian community–not lauded. Bible-believing Christians may practice civil disobedience (e.g. Martin Luther King Jr.‘s freedom marches), but violence against authority is not Biblical (e.g. Dietrich Bonhoeffer felt that he needed to ask God’s forgiveness for plotting against Hitler).

The report is approximately 37 pages long. It reminds me of the story (previously related in this blog) about the man walking around under a streetlight seemingly looking for something. When someone asks him what he is doing, he explains that he is looking for his car keys, which he dropped on the other side of the street. When asked why he is looking under the streetlight when he dropped the keys on the other side of the street, he replies. “Because the light is better over here.” Obviously, as long as he is looking on the wrong side of the street, he has no hope of finding his keys.

So why would the Department of Homeland Security rather see Christians as a threat than Muslims? Christians in America don’t fight back. Muslim radicals have learned to use the American court system to their advantage. We have seen that particularly in the Midwest with regard to foot washing basins in airports and taxi drivers who refuse to transport blind people because Muslims regard dogs as unclean.

It’s much easier to search for your keys under the streetlight! You may never find them, but the search is easier!

 

 
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Putting The Focus Where The Problem Is

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Peter king

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As Congress tries to find ways of cutting the federal budget, a few Congressmen are looking at ways to make some agencies more efficient in dealing with the problems they were created to solve. In Washington, that is easier said than done.

Representative Peter King is asking for changes at the Department of Homeland Security that would allow the Department to focus formally on “homegrown violent Islamist extremism.” Joe Lieberman has introduced a companion bill in the Senate that would require a czar to oversee the program.

The article reports:

“Sen. Lieberman and I think it’s important to focus on the most serious threat, and Islamist radicalism is the most dangerous threat,” the Long Island Republican said. “By not saying that, we would be creating the appearance of equivalency with any number of different threats.”

Under President Obama, Homeland Security has avoided the term “terrorism” and references to radical Islam.

Whether it is politically correct to say so or not, the majority of our problems with terrorism have been with Islamist extremists. It is foolish to say that by ignoring that fact, we are doing something constructive.

The article further reminds us:

Both bills, for example, would consolidate redundant DHS offices and impose tight controls on spending by the agency, which has wasted billions in its first seven years.

Most notably, the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that DHS spent more than $4 billion on nuclear detection equipment that either didn’t work or wouldn’t fit in lanes at U.S. ports of entry.

It will be interesting to listen to the debate as these two bills move through Congress.

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