The Washington Post reports that Tara O’Toole is poking around at the Department of Homeland Security, and apparently anticipating the Senate will confirm her nomination soon:

The Department of Homeland Security directorate of science and technology is moving office furniture around these days, apparently to fit more folks into available space. Buzz has it that the musical chairs is even going on in the suites on the Vermont Avenue side reserved for the top officials. We’re told that Tara O’Toole, whose nomination to be undersecretary of that operation is being held up in the Senate, has picked out some snappy blond furniture to grace the potential undersecretary’s office.

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Unbelievable. Where is the change?

The Homeland Security Department, which includes U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, has been unable to provide permanent residence status to more than 7,000 eligible refugees and asylum seekers, Leahy said in a Senate floor speech last week.

Leahy said the administration has been too slow to help foreigners who pose no threat but have been ensnarled by overly broad restrictions under which they are classified as having given material support to terrorists abroad. Refugees, in particular, have been incarcerated while waiting to resolve their petitions for permanent residence.

"As a result, those who bravely fought repressive governments in their home countries, and those who joined the United States in opposing despots, can now be called terrorists and barred from protection in our nation," Leahy said.

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In the wake of the shooting at the Holocaust Museum, there’s been something of a mad rush by left-wing bloggers to use the shooting to validate the now-infamous Department of Homeland Security report on “right-wing extremists.”.

There are two noteworthy aspects of this effort. One, it continues the DHS report’s willful misidintification of people like James von Brunn, the museum shooter, as “right-wing.” And two, it ultimately embraces the concept of profiling in law enforcement, in ways that liberals used to deplore.

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Whether or not you agree with my politics, don’t worry: you’re probably in here somewhere.  It’s a report from last month called the “Domestic Extremism Lexicon,” and it’s quite comprehensive.  Did you know that anti-abortion protesters and animal rights activists are domestic extremists?  Yes, the same sloppy language as last time. So bad, in fact, that they tried to bury it…

Hot Air and The Daily Beast are both covering this one, and I agree with both that the categories are disturbingly broad, and cross-spectrum. The phrase “[members of group X] have been known to advocate or engage in criminal activity and plot acts of violence and terrorism to advance their extremist goals” appears far too often for comfort. The reason that this is discomforting is that it strongly implies that DHS isn’t distinguishing between (for example) animal rights activists who don’t intend to break the law to further their agenda and animal rights activists who do. Why, in fact, does DHS even care about animal rights activists who aren’t breaking the law? Or anti-abortion activists? Anti-technologists? Green anarchists? Heck, they even know that there’s several different flavors of skinheads, and they lump them all together in one big ball anyway. What gives?

Well, what gives is that we’re talking about DHS, which was created in haste: we are apparently starting to hit the ‘repent in leisure’ point. The real problem is not any one particular memo, of course. The problem is the mindset that created those memos, and I’ve yet to see any indication that people are working on fixing that mindset. This should alarm you, no matter where you stand on which status quo to disrupt: apparently just wanting to change it at all is enough to worry Homeland Security in the Obama era…

Moe Lane

Unlike Ed Morrissey I am not automatically upset at the rather gaping lack of any discussion of Islamist (or Muslim) extremists in the lexicon: I’ve read the introduction, and it suggests that there’s a separate report out there that specifically handles that particular issue. This would be logical, given that the threat from Islamist extremists to this country is greater than that of every domestic extremist group combined… but the longer it is before that report gets leaked, the worse PR it’s going to be for this administration.

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

Now, the official Obama administration policy is that being a conservative makes you a threat to the security of America (actual report in pdf form here). Being a military veteran makes you doubly suspect as a dangerous subversive. It is clear from Napolitano’s non-apology when cornered on it, that the directive came from higher up [i.e., Obama himself], and further, that they have no intention of backing down on it.

Yesterday, seven GOP Senators (some of our favorites) sent a letter to Homeland Secretary Janet Napolitano. It was a sharply toned letter, with pointed, well-formed questions that indeed demand answers that all of America would like to hear. Warner Todd Huston has the details, including the text of the letter and the signees.

But the Senators did not go far enough. It is time to draw the line : This far, and no further. Follow the jump to see the letter they should have written.

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Seven Republican Senators have this week signed a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano asking for the proof upon which the Department of Homeland Security based its outrageously accusatory report on so-called rightwing extremism in the Untied States.

The seven scold the DHS and the Obama administration for its over-broad generalizations that seem to assume that nearly half the electorate is prone to becoming terrorists merely because they hold right of center political views.

The letter alludes to the central point in this whole episode: that the U.S. government has now determined that the traditional American beliefs of small government and adherence to the Constitution is now suddenly a determinant in forming citizens into homegrown terrorist groups. After 200 years, all of a sudden believing in run-of-the-mill American beliefs makes you a terrorist! These seven Senators want to know why.

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