Fausta's Blog

American and Latin American Politics, Society, and Culture

By

Border security for pu**ies: The Sir Robin border patrol strategy

Border security = national security, and we’re in the hands of Sir Robin.

First, The Tale of Sir Robin:

And now, the news story, via Jawa:

Border Patrol union blasts Homeland Security instructions to ‘run away’ and ‘hide’ from gunmen

Border Patrol agents in Arizona are blasting their bosses for telling them, along with all other Department of Homeland Security employees, to run and hide if they encounter an “active shooter.”
It’s one thing to tell civilian employees to cower under a desk if a gunman starts spraying fire in a confined area, say members of Tucson Local 2544/National Border Patrol Council, but to give armed law enforcement professionals the same advice is downright insulting. The instructions from DHS come in the form of pamphlets and a mandatory computer tutorial.

Specifically,

Main Points of the “Active Shooter” training course
Evacuate: If there is an accessible escape path, attempt to evacuate the premises.
Hide out: If evacuation is not possible, find a place to hide where the active shooter is less likely to find you.
Take action: As a last resort, and only when your life is in imminent danger, attempt to disrupt and/or incapacitate the active shooter.

Say again? “Attempt to disrupt and/or incapacitate the active shooter”? Whatever happened to shoot to kill?

What’s next? Holler at them, “Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elder berries”?

Jawa also points out,

OT kinda but not considering the current head of DHS and her prior position as Gov of Arizona: Obama Contributor, Who Helped Enact Assault-Weapons Ban, Ran ‘Fast and Furious’

In 2003, when Napolitano became governor, Burke became her chief of staff. He stayed in that job until the fall of 2008, when he left to help Democratic political campaigns, including then-Sen. Obama’s presidential campaign

Read it all.

We’re in the best of hands.

UPDATE,
Linked by Mental Recession. Thanks!

Cross-posted in The Green Room.


Share

By

London? Whaddaya mean, London?

Diane Sawyer interviews the three top National Security people in the US, and finds out they didn’t know about the latest arrests in London:

Allahpundit has more:
U.S. Director of National Intelligence on London terror arrests: Er, what terror arrests?

If you thought the gaffes in Diane Sawyer’s interview with our counterterror brain trust couldn’t get worse than “364 days a year,” skip ahead to 3:35 and brace yourself. It’s so bizarre that I’m actually searching for ways to rationalize it. Napolitano claimed yesterday that there was no evidence thus far to think the plot was aimed at the U.S., so … maybe they figured Clapper didn’t need to be briefed on it? That can’t be right, though. There were fully a dozen men arrested and, after all, British-based plots have targeted America before, so surely the DNI would be apprised. In fact, let’s approach the question this way: Why would the DNI ever not need to be briefed on a major unfolding plot? Napolitano and Brennan apparently knew the details; even if Clapper was in a meeting when the news broke, wouldn’t you pull him out of it or at least him fill him in on the details on the way to being interviewed by a major network news anchor? Sawyer herself is clearly amazed by his ignorance or else she wouldn’t have devoted valuable airtime to highlighting it.

Maybe, expecting the National Intelligence Director to keep up on major international terror arrests is asking too much?

24414
Share

By

Patdowns and searches now at bus stations

You don’t believe me? Watch this report by a local TV station in Tampa, Fl:

Radley Balko:

A liberal blogger wrote to me in an email this week that libertarians who call the TSA pat-downs a violation of their civil liberties do a disservice to actual violations of civil liberties. It’s not difficult to envision the day where anyone wishing to take mass transportation in this country will have to first submit to a government checkpoint, show ID, and answer questions about any excess cash, prescription medication, or any other items in his possession the government deems suspicious. If and when that happens, freedom of movement will essentially be dead. But it won’t happen overnight. It’ll happen incrementally. And each increment will, when taken in isolation, appear to some to be perfectly reasonable.

That’s exactly the plan.

24093
Share

By

Coming up: TSA body scanners on public transportation

Jazz has a list of reasons why he doesn’t object to the body scanners. Now it looks like we’ll be getting scanners all over the place, including public transportation, trains and boats. Janet Napolitano:

“I think the tighter we get on aviation, we have to also be thinking now about going on to mass transit or to trains or maritime. So, what do we need to be doing to strengthen our protections there?”

Each body scanner costs $150,000.

Considering that the number of body scanners has tripled since last year, and that Napolitano is looking at placing them all over the place, the scanners makers got a great return on their lobbying investment.

Cross-posted at Hot Air

23988
Share

By

Obama: TSA patdowns frustrating but necessary

Obama: TSA pat-downs frustrating but necessary
President says enhanced airport security measures necessary to guard against new terrorist techniques

“I understand people’s frustrations, and what I’ve said to the TSA is that you have to constantly refine and measure whether what we’re doing is the only way to assure the American people’s safety. And you also have to think through are there other ways of doing it that are less intrusive,” Obama said.

“But at this point, TSA in consultation with counterterrorism experts have indicated to me that the procedures that they have been putting in place are the only ones right now that they consider to be effective against the kind of threat that we saw in the Christmas Day bombing.”

What “counterterrorism experts” are those? The PC police? Because the procedures that are actually effective involve profiling, which neither GWB nor Obama want to consider.

Obama assumes the position of helplessness so he wants you to assume the submissive position,

“One of the most frustrating aspects of this fight against terrorism is that it has created a whole security apparatus around us that causes huge inconvenience for all of us,” Obama said.

And he can’t do anything about it?
There you have it. “Frustrating but necessary”:

“Frustrating but necessary“:

You may have heard about Janet Napolitano’s blue shirts forcing a cancer-surviving flight attendant to remove her prosthetic breast, or the woman whose pants the TSA’s hand went down:

“I was shaking and crying when I left that room” Moroney says.  “Under any other circumstance, if a person touched me like that without my permission, it would be considered criminal sexual assault.”

You may have also heard about the woman who was singled out because she was wearing a skirt:

“The female officer ran her hand up the inside of my leg to my groin and she did it so hard and so rough she lifted me off my heels,” she says. “I think I yelped. I was in pain for about an hour afterwards. It just felt excessive and unnecessary.”

You may have also heard about the cancer survivor who, due to an “enhanced” TSA pat-down breaking the seal on his urastomy bag, was left humiliated, in tears, and covered in his own urine.

“Frustrating but necessary”:

“Frustrating but necessary”:

Once again…

  • Number of TSA Agents: 67,000
  • TSA’s FY 2010 budget: $7.8 billion
  • Number of terrorists caught by TSA: ZERO.
23948
Share

By

Krauthammer tells the truth about the TSA junk searches UPDATED with VIDEO

Don’t touch my junk

everyone knows that the entire apparatus of the security line is a national homage to political correctness. Nowhere do more people meekly acquiesce to more useless inconvenience and needless indignity for less purpose. Wizened seniors strain to untie their shoes; beltless salesmen struggle comically to hold up their pants; 3-year-olds scream while being searched insanely for explosives – when everyone, everyone, knows that none of these people is a threat to anyone.

The ultimate idiocy is the full-body screening of the pilot. The pilot doesn’t need a bomb or box cutter to bring down a plane. All he has to do is drive it into the water, like the EgyptAir pilot who crashed his plane off Nantucket while intoning “I rely on God,” killing all on board.

But we must not bring that up. We pretend that we go through this nonsense as a small price paid to ensure the safety of air travel. Rubbish. This has nothing to do with safety – 95 percent of these inspections, searches, shoe removals and pat-downs are ridiculously unnecessary. The only reason we continue to do this is that people are too cowed to even question the absurd taboo against profiling – when the profile of the airline attacker is narrow, concrete, uniquely definable and universally known. So instead of seeking out terrorists, we seek out tubes of gel in stroller pouches.

Scott Johnson writes about the revolt against the TSA,

The revolt against the TSA is a sign of the times. Popular frustration with the TSA dates back to its establishment during the Bush administration. It is another big government bureaucracy that performs ineptly and with gross inconvenience. It provides far more security theater than security.
…
In its absurd intrusiveness and glaring incompetence, the TSA has become a perfect metaphor for the Obama administration. Thus the revolt.

Yes, it’s all security theater, not real security measures. I disagree with Scott in one thing: it’s not a metaphor, it’s yet one more symptom of the incompetence of big government.

UPDATE,
Mr Bingley will never forgive Napolitano while Mary Katherine has the YouTube,

23897
Share

By

Abolish the TSA!

Art Carden writes,
Full Frontal Nudity Doesn’t Make Us Safer: Abolish the TSA

In the spirit of bipartisanship and sanity, I propose that the first thing on the chopping block should be an ineffective organization that wastes money, violates our rights, and encourages us to make decisions that imperil our safety. I’m talking about the Transportation Security Administration.

Bipartisan support should be immediate. For fiscal conservatives, it’s hard to come up with a more wasteful agency than the TSA. For privacy advocates, eliminating an organization that requires you to choose between a nude body scan or genital groping in order to board a plane should be a no-brainer.

Charles Peña calls the TSA the Theater Security Administration because of their

security measures that make people feel more secure without doing anything to actually improve their security

James Pethokoukis should add abolishing the TSA to his budget-balancing measures.

Meanwhile, the TSA is investigating John Tyner.

Tyner speaks,

But don’t worry. Janet Napolitano assures us this is for our own good.

23848
Share

By

Failed Times Square terrorist attack

And the only reason it failed was because it didn’t go off even after detonating.

Police Find Car Bomb in Times Square

A crude car bomb of propane, gasoline and fireworks was discovered in a smoking Nissan Pathfinder in the heart of Times Square on Saturday evening, prompting the evacuation of thousands of tourists and theatergoers on a warm and busy night. Although the device had apparently started to detonate, there was no explosion, and early on Sunday the authorities were still seeking a suspect and motive.

Killing and injuring large numbers of people would seem pretty clear…Hmmm… but we wouldn’t want to do any profiling, would we?

A large swath of Midtown — from 43rd Street to 48th Street, and from Sixth to Eighth Avenues — was closed for much of the evening after the Pathfinder was discovered just off Broadway on 45th Street. Several theaters and stores, as well as the South Tower of the New York Marriott Marquis Hotel, were evacuated.
…
At 6:28 p.m., Mr. Kelly said, a video surveillance camera recorded what was believed to be the dark green Nissan S.U.V. driving west on 45th Street.

Moments later, a T-shirt vendor on the sidewalk saw smoke coming out of vents near the back seat of the S.U.V., which was now parked awkwardly at the curb with its engine running and its hazard lights on. The vendor called to a mounted police officer, the mayor said, who smelled gunpowder when he approached the S.U.V. and called for assistance. The police began evacuating Times Square, starting with businesses along Seventh Avenue, including a Foot Locker store and a McDonald’s.

Police officers from the emergency service unit and firefighters flooded the area and were troubled by the hazard lights and running engine, and by the fact that the S.U.V. was oddly angled in the street. At this point, a firefighter from Ladder 4 reported hearing several “pops” from within the vehicle. The police also learned that the Pathfinder had the wrong license plates on it.

Members of the Police Department’s bomb squad donned protective gear, broke the Pathfinder’s back windows and sent in a “robotic device” to “observe” it, said Deputy Commissioner Paul J. Browne, the police department’s chief spokesman.

Inside, they discovered three canisters of propane like those used for barbecue grills, two five-gallon cans of gasoline, consumer-grade fireworks — the apparent source of the “pops” — and two clocks with batteries, the mayor said. He said the device “looked amateurish.”

Mr. Browne said: “It appeared it was in the process of detonating, but it malfunctioned.”

Bomb squad officers also discovered a two-by-two-by-four-foot metal box — described as a “gun locker” — in the S.U.V. that was taken to the Police Department’s firing range at Rodman’s Neck in the Bronx to be destroyed, Mr. Kelly said. It was not immediately known what, if anything, was inside it.

Janet Napolitano calls it a “potential terrorist attack“, not a failed terrorist attack. Can’t wait for her to say “the system worked.”

And
Via Darlene, Allahpundit:

What makes me nervous is the use of propane. Remember that London bombing plot three years ago, in which jihadis tried — and failed — to set off a bunch of car bombs around the city? Quote:

The car bombs were similar to highly destructive explosives used in Iraq and could have killed hundreds of people, U.S. and British officials told NBC News. British officials warned that the country was facing a “serious and sustained” terrorist threat…

Authorities believe [the first car] was intended to be set off by remote control by a cell phone found inside. The cell phone had received at least two calls, which should have detonated several gallons of gasoline, but when the calls came in, the bomb failed to go off, the official said.

Had it done so, that blast then would have ignited six to eight tanks of propane in a mist to make a fuel-air explosion, creating a fireball the size of a small house and propelling 18 to 20 boxes of roofing nails around a large area at bullet speed, counterterrorism officials said.

Fuel-air bombs are hugely destructive, as this harrowing Danger Room article published after the London plot broke made all too clear. A fuel-air bomb properly detonated in Times Square on a Saturday night likely would have killed hundreds of people. If that’s what this was — and the feds evidently aren’t sure yet, despite reports of “fireworks” going on in the back seat and someone running away from the vehicle — then there’s a seriously dangerous individual running around NYC right now. Stay tuned. While we wait, check out this PowerPoint presentation generated by the NYPD after the London plot was foiled. The last slide is the one you’re interested in.

Worried yet, Janet?

UPDATE
Paterson: Failed Car Bomb In Times Square Is ‘Act Of Terrorism’, via Doug Ross

Share