Pardon My Politics

The well-known slogan “Don’t Mess with Texas” has taken on a new meaning: A small Texas school district will let its teachers and staff bring their guns to school this fall with relatively few strings attached. Why? To actually defend the students and employees in the event an armed intruder starts shooting. Imagine police arresting a wounded school intruder, or bagging a dead one, instead of once again cleaning up a carnage of dead and wounded students and staff.

Another reality in the post-9/11 growth of intelligence analysis capability is outsourcing. We have outsourced the management of billlion-dollar technical collection programs, and we have contracted intelligence analysts. The National Reconnaissance Office is a lot more than an office; may have the largest budget of all the U.S. intelligence agencies. It may also be the best example of how U.S. government contractors, i.e., private industry, are taking over the government and costing us needless billions of dollars. The NRO buys spy satellites. Over the course of the last ten years, much of its government employee expertise has largely been eliminated by swapping career experts out

In reaction to 9/11, our modern Pearl Harbor, the Federal Government has gone far beyond taking measures to prevent terrorism. They've taken measures to prevent the freedom of US citizens. In the hurricane of post 9/11 legislation sweeping through Congress, a suspicious little addendum to a military appropriations and tsunami relief bill (HR1268), the Real ID Act of 2005(HR418), handed to the Federal Government all control over our state-issued driver's license.