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Crooked thug Bernard Kerik was denied his chance to run Homeland Security like some mafia fiefdom, but that doesn’t mean his career is totally finished. Kerik’s going to Guyana, where he’ll be the local president’s tough guy. MORE »
* Rupert Murdoch shoots lightning bolts from his various “news” outlets at Hillary, mumbles something about her paying for “lack of vision.” [Radar]
* Hillary betrayed by a pant suit. Hotline on Call]
* Rush Limbaugh’s favorite place to eat in DC is same as Treasury Department employees’ favorite place to score coke. [Media Matters]
* Christopher Dodd sends any old bullshit to the FEC, they’re just an “accounting thing” anyway. [Political Insider]
* FBI says any old bullshit to the media, they’re just an accountability thing anyway. [TPM Muckraker]
* Department of Homeland Security remembers to give SOTU the same security rating as the Super Bowl. [Suitably Flip]
* Military’s new bunker-buster bomb has a pretty sweet porno name. [Military & Aerospace Electronics]
* TPM Muckraker Justin Rood bolting for ABC’s The Blotter & Brian Ross’ pretend phone. [TPM]
* Which President has spent the most time talking about Pearl Harbor? Hint: It’s not Franklin Roosevelt. [Lawyers, Guns and Money]
* Buy two regular price blowjobs from DC hookers and they’ll keep your secret for free. [TPM Muckraker]
* President Bush wants a cookie for some shit he was supposed to do anyway. [Hotline on Call]
* DHS program that assigns “secret terrorist ratings to millions of U.S. citizens,” gets highest possible “Five Kafkas” for its scary PoMo essence. [Computerworld, The Heretik]
* Walnuts McCain hires a communications director even Wal-Mart thinks is too evil. [Election Central]
* Some people just have to be first: “Top Ten Funniest Political Moments of 2006.” [Extreme Mortman]
* On Oscar night, pay close attention to the size of Al Gore’s ass — that’s how you’ll know if he’s running in ‘08. [SFGate]
Terrorists struck the Lincoln Memorial today with a semi-literate hand-scrawled note and various half-consumed consumer beverages. MORE »
* Janet Reno joins Justice Department Officials from Carter, Reagan, and Clinton administrations to issue a letter against indefinite detention of terror suspects. [WP]
* Embattled federal family planning programs chief Eric Keroack has previously prescribed actual birth control and not just the trusty “pull out” technique. [WP]
* Shattering the myth of government efficiency, contracting procedures at DHS are found to be inconsistent and poorly documented. [WP]
* White House appears willing to drop private accounts from Social Security reform package. [WSJ]
* Rules of Congressional real estate: location, location, and “mine is bigger than yours” bragging rights. [NYT]
* Joe Lieberman hires “Trotskyite Zionist Reaganite” as communications director. [NYT]
* Ohio, not wanting Wonkette to be starved for material, puts Jean Schmidt back in office. [AP]
Al Kamen reported yesterday that Homeland Security head Michael Chertoff is the proud recipient of this year’s “prestigious Henry Petersen award.”
The award is traditionally given to Department of Justice criminal division careerists who did their jobs well for a long time. Chertoff’s honor hasn’t garnered a lot of attention, but one guy who did notice was Miles W. Swanson, grandson of Henry Petersen himself. Swanson writes:
Today with horror I read in the Washington Post that Michael Chertoff is receiving the Department of Justice Criminal Division’s Henry Petersen Award, the most prestigious award for the DoJ’s Criminal Division. Besides being my grandfather, Henry Petersen was the Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Criminal Division, chief prosecutor for Watergate, and career employee at the DOJ. What makes this situation so horrible, besides the fact that Mr. Chertoff is a political appointee, an ass, not a career employee at the DOJ, and probably the exact opposite of my grandfather: I moved to New Orleans from D.C. a couple months after Katrina to do volunteer legal work. I staff a free legal clinic in the 9th Ward with the Common Ground Legal Collective as well as several bankruptcy/debtor relief clinics in and around New Orleans as part of The Pro Bono Project. As you can imagine, I deal with Mr. Chertoff’s mess on a daily basis. Normally, I go out to lunch with all the heads and award recipient and to the award ceremony (being held tomorrow [today -ed] at the DOJ) every year with my grandmother and mother to present the award. It’s probably best that I don’t go as they would have a tough time holding me back.
After the jump, Mr. Swanson’s letters to Mr. Chertoff and Assistant Attorney General Alice Fisher.
The latest outrage from Abteilung der Heimatsicherheit: On-duty Border Patrol agents visited by members of Congress have to send a “significant event report” to their Inspektoren. MORE »
The pressure of wasting billions of dollars per week on nonsensical “Homeland Security” programs can take its toll in many ways, like trying to seduce children online by sending pornographic videos of yourself … from DHS computers.
Read the whole rancid story, after the jump.
Michael Chertoff rented this tux, because the terrorists wanted him to buy. (Photo by Liz Gorman)
Congress and the American public must accept that the government cannot protect every possible target against attack if it wants to avoid fulfilling Al Qaeda’s goal of bankrupting the nation, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told a Senate committee Tuesday.
