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.
Secretary Janet Napolitano has gotten a heap of well-deserved criticism for the report that her office rushed out, naming veterans, believers in gun rights, low-tax advocates, and other conservatives as possible terrorists. So far she has failed adequately to explain how her Department issued a report that slanders our military, our law enforcement agencies, and millions of average Americans.
Roll Call reports today that Napolitano has now apologized for this obvious screwup - but she has done so secretly, in a letter to a House Committee Chairman. The letter has not been shared with Republicans:
Rep. Peter King (N.Y.), the top Republican on the Homeland Security Committee, said Thompson did not share the letter with him, and it doesn’t change anything.
“To me this makes it more essential to provide [Congress] with all of the records” related to the report, King said after Roll Call showed him a copy of the letter…
In her letter, Napolitano admitted to Thompson that the report was released despite concerns by the department’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, a fact King emphasized.
“It seems like a department not under control,” King said. “Why was a report that was so off target released over the objections of the Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties?”…
President Obama has basked in the international glow of his decision to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center, but he’s never yet answered the hard question at the core of opposition to this decision: what are you going to do with the detainees? It’s a question some of our allies have proven much less interested in asking themselves (witness France’s announcement that it would take one detainee - one can practically hear the French snickering “I told him we already had one!”). It’s also a question of great concern to ordinary Americans who may not be thrilled that Al Qaeda detainees are coming to their own home town.
Congressman Peter King, the ranking Member of the House Commitee on Homeland Security, released a letter today to Attorney General Holder and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, co-signed by 12 other Members, asking that question and a variety of detailed followups. From King’s statement:
[President Obama] made this decision without an exit strategy, without a plan of what to do with these 245 enemy combatants once Guantanamo is closed. The Executive Order to close Guantanamo was signed over three months ago, and the American people are still waiting to learn what their government plans to do with these deadly terrorists.
The ball is in the Obama Administration’s court now to level with the voters about its plans to bring terrorists into the United States. A copy of Congressman King’s letter is below the fold.
Long Island’s Peter King is being criticized by liberals in New York for his response to DHS’s recent report on right-wing extremism. His critics want him to offer an apology for remarks viewed as insensitive or even racist:
In response to a Department of Homeland Security report about domestic right-wing extremism, King (R-Seaford) told MSNBC Friday that the department “has never put out a report talking about look out for mosques. Look out for Islamic terrorists in our country. Look out for the fact that very few Muslims come forward to cooperate with the police.”
For some, it was reminiscent of when King made national headlines in 2007 for saying there are “too many mosques in this country.” Friday’s comments were called “bigoted” by the New York chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
Sometimes you have to wonder if reporters just do dictation for Democrat Press Secretaries. Check out this story by Politico’s Andy Barr. He invented a debate between Louisiana Republican Governor Bobby Jindal and former Vice President Dick Cheney to make sure that it had the White House’s framing, no matter how far from the truth it was, excluding all sorts of essential facts.
You see, Jindal was on Good Morning America, Jindal came on right after Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, who had just attacked Cheney. The GMA host asked Jindal to respond to Napolitano about Cheney. Jindal ducked and attacked Obama’s policies. Watch it:
But look at how Barr reported it:
“I think Democrat or Republican, we should all agree that our current president, our former president would obviously want to do everything they could to keep us safe,” he said. “Let’s give the new administration a chance. Let’s not question their intentions. Let’s have a real debate on their policies.”
The Republican governor praised Obama for “showing more flexibility when it comes to Iraq than maybe some of the campaign rhetoric suggested.”
“I am, quite honestly, pleasantly surprised,” he said. “That’s the kind of pragmatism, listening to the commanders on the ground, I think is very important.”
Jindal did offer some criticism of the president, pointing out that it is “fine to have an honest disagreement on the policies that both administrations would choose to try to keep us safe.”
Somehow Barr’s report manages to exclude Jindal’s criticism over Guantanamo prisoners, which was one of Cheney’s specific attacks. He also excluded the fact that the question asked was explicitly in response to Napolitano’s attack on Cheney. Or even that Jindal didn’t even mention “Cheney”, “Vice President”, or anything like that.
And that tells you really what you need to know. Like with Rush Limbaugh, the White House is trying to pick their opponents. They want to be debating Dick Cheney, not Bobby Jindal. GMA didn’t give the White House’s framing by asking Jindal to respond to Napolitano. So Barr stepped in to frame it up with the White House’s preferred story-line, points of disagreement. What was “Cheney attacks Obama”, “Napolitano attacks Cheney”, and “Jindal attacks Obama” was twisted into “Jindal attacks Cheney” by aggressive editing and removal of context.
This is just a reporter taking dictation for the White House. Nothing more complicated.
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.
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano avoids mention of terrorism or 9/11 in remarks prepared for her first congressional testimony since taking office, signaling a sharp change in tone from her predecessors.
Napolitano is the first homeland security secretary to drop the term “terror” and “vulnerability” from remarks prepared for delivery to the House Homeland Security Committee, according to a copy obtained by The Associated Press.
Chances are you’ll recognize Joe Arpaio by name. And if you don’t, his bio is likely to jog your memory. Known as ‘America’s Toughest Sheriff,’ Arpaio has angered the liberal Democrats in Congress with his tough-on-criminals approach. And now they plan to go after him:
House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) and three fellow Democrats want the Department of Justice to investigate civil rights complaints against controversial sheriff Joe Arpaio…
