Pardon My Politics

There have been more than 200 confirmed incursions by the Mexican military across the United States border, and a recent incident along the United States border with Mexico, and the State Department's subsequent incoherent response, should leave every American citizen who values the importance of homeland security frustrated, furious, and ...

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.

Blood money stains the hands of more than 25% of members of the U.S. House and Senate Who profits from the Iraq war? More than a quarter of senators and congressmen have invested at least $196 million of their own money in companies doing business with the Department of Defense (DoD) that profit from the death and destruction in Iraq. According to the latest reports, 151 members of Congress invested close to a quarter-billion in companies that received defense contracts of at least $5 million in 2006. These companies got more than $275.6 billion from the government in 2006, or $755 million per day, according to FedSpending.org, a website of the watchdog group OMBWatch.

Americans should heed the urgings of Mark Sanford (R) a former House member and current governor of Georgia, who is urging Americans to prod their lawmakers into debating REAL ID, pointing out that the revolutionary, Constitution-defying legislation passed as an amendment to a major bill without hearings or debate. REAL ID "never saw committee debate in the House and Senate, and passed as nothing more than a rider, an attachment to a bill devoted to tsunami relief and military personnel fighting in the Middle East," Sanford wrote in a Washington Times commentary.