Dennis rips into Stedman Graham Eric Holder and Bob Schieffer, NASA’s reaching out to Muslims and more. A must-see!

Is Attorney General Eric Holder more interested in bullying Arizonians over immigration enforcement than in protecting Americans from nuclear, biological or chemical weapons?

A report released by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of the U.S. House of Representatives, reveals that almost nine years after the 9-11 terrorist attacks Attorney General Eric Holder does not have a coordinated plan to respond to the threat and use of weapons of mass destruction.

The use of weapons of mass destruction, whether by a hostile nation, a terrorist group, or an individual, poses a serious threat to the United States, yet the GAO report suggests that anti-WMD policy does not sit high on Holder’s “to do” list.

One of the greatest concerns is that a WMD may fall into the hands of terrorists or that terrorists will develop their own WMD. WMDs include any device that is intended to cause death or serious bodily injury to a significant number of people through the release of toxic chemicals, disease organisms, or radioactive material.

The federal government has taken various steps to prepare to meet that threat. Among those steps has been the issuance of national policies, such as the National Response Framework, issued in January 2008 by the Department of Homeland Security and approved by then President George W. Bush.

The National Response Framework established a comprehensive approach for a unified national response to natural and man-made disasters, including WMD incidents. The National Response Framework directs the Attorney General to appoint a Senior Federal Law Enforcement Official to coordinate and direct federal law enforcement support activities related to a critical incident.

Also, the National Response Framework includes annexes called Emergency Support Functions (ESF) that assign specific responsibilities to federal agencies in the event of a disaster. Under the National Response Framework, the Department of Justice is assigned by ESF-13 the responsibility for coordinating federal law enforcement activities in response to a critical incident, such as a WMD attack, and for ensuring public safety and security in the event an incident overwhelms state and local law enforcement.

Recently the U.S. Congress directed the Government Accountability Office to evaluate the readiness of the Justice Department and its branches to respond to a potential WMD incident. In addition, GAO examined the readiness of the Justice Department components’ field offices in the National Capital Region (NCR) to respond in a coordinated way to a WMD incident.

The GAO reports that its analysts found that the Federal Bureau of Investigation has taken appropriate steps to prepare to respond to a potential WMD attack. The FBI has implemented a headquarters-led program that has established WMD response plans, provides WMD training to its staff and regularly conducts and participates in WMD exercises.

However, the GAO concluded that the Department of Justice as a whole and components within the Department have not implemented adequate WMD response plans. As a result, the Department is not fully prepared to provide a coordinated response to a WMD incident.

For example, the Justice Department did not assign one entity or individual with the responsibility for the central oversight or management of WMD incident response. The Department has not updated its policies to reflect recent national policies, and the Department’s operational response policies and plans have not been fully implemented. Moreover, no components other than the FBI have specific WMD operational response plans or provide training on responding to a WMD incident.

The GAO also determined that the Department is not prepared to fulfill its role, assigned to it under the National Response Framework’s ESF-13, to ensure public safety and security in the event a WMD incident overwhelms state and local law enforcement.

The Justice Department designated the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) as the lead agency to implement this requirement, but the GAO report states: “[We] found that the Department and ATF have not fulfilled the Department’s role for coordinating the federal law enforcement response activities to an ESF-13 activation. For example, the Department and ATF have not made personnel assignments to manage these activities, and ATF has not developed a catalog of law enforcement resources – people and equipment – available to be deployed in the event of a WMD incident.”

Other than the FBI, Department components’ preparations for responding to a WMD incident were not well coordinated. Department personnel (other than FBI staff) receive little training in the unique requirements associated with responding to a WMD incident.

The GAO also reported finding that the Department does not have central oversight or management of WMD incident response policy development and planning for responding to a WMD incident.

“The management of the Department’s response program is uncoordinated and fragmented, with some response functions being handled by a Special Assistant to the Deputy Attorney General and others by senior staff at the National Security Division (NSD), the Executive Office for United States Attorneys (EOUSA), and the FBI,” states the GAO report.

In testimony before the House Judiciary Committee on 5/13/2010, US Attorney General Eric Holder refuses to use the term “radical Islam.” Like any good Socialist Liberal Progressive would admit, those two words scare them to death.

“If Secretary Napolitano were a conservative Republican, the news media would have lambasted her daily and editorial writers would have demanded her resignation. They would have whipped up the public to demand her removal if she were a member of the GOP.”

Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano is faulted for states such as Arizona taking matters into their own hands. Her alleged lax attitude towards illegal aliens and her opposition to tough law enforcement contributed to Arizona passing its own illegal immigration law.

Last year, Secretary Napolitano’s stripped Maricopa County, Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio — also known as “America’s Sheriff” by many admirers who hail him as a hero – of his federal authority to arrest suspected illegal immigrants based solely on their immigration status. The federal authorities under President Barack Obama wish to do away with local cops enforcing our nation’s immigration laws.

Arpaio’s deputies attended the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Center in order to be trained for immigration enforcement as part of their regular law enforcement and jail management duties. In addition to the DHS attempting to curtail Sheriff Arpaio’s immigration enforcement activities — he states he will not stop arresting illegal aliens — Obama’s Attorney General, Eric Holder, began to investigate Sheriff Arpaio and his department.

In the same week that the nation’s Homeland Security secretary assured Congress the southern border is more secure than ever, an Arizona sheriff deputy got shot by Mexican drug smugglers and an illegal immigrant drop house got busted in separate areas.

Is it possible that Janet Napolitano misspoke at last week’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing when she confidently asserted that the U.S.-Mexico border is “as secure now as it’s ever been?” She is after all, the Obama Administration official charged with protecting the country’s safety and securing its borders, said officials at the watchdog group Judicial Watch.

Her words certainly lost credibility because they were delivered within days of two separate incidents that contradict her seemingly delusional assessment of the southern border. Additionally, there has been solid documentation—from the media as well as the government—of a drastic increase in violence by drug and human smugglers that routinely make their way north, according to the legal team at Judicial Watch, a public-interest group that investigates government corruption.

“If Secretary Napolitano were a conservative Republican, the news media would have lambasted her daily and editorial writers would have demanded her resignation. They would have whipped up the public to demand her removal if she were a member of the GOP,” claims political strategist Mike Baker.

Just a few weeks ago a federal report revealed that Mexican drug cartels continue to be the nation’s largest supplier of illicit narcotics and that violent Mexican gangs have expanded into every region of the country, including idyllic rural areas. Thousands of metric tons of heroin, methamphetamine, marijuana and cocaine were smuggled into the U.S. from Mexico in the last year and tens of billions of dollars in drug proceeds flowed back south, according to the Justice Department’s National Drug Intelligence Center.

Weeks before that the Department of Homeland Security issued an alert to warn U.S. law enforcement officers and their families that a deadly Mexican gang is actively plotting to kill them in retaliation for a sweep targeting its thugs. The alert warns cops to wear body armor and vary routes to avoid being tracked by the violent gang that has spread throughout the U.S.

Last week alone, local authorities in west Phoenix discovered about a dozen illegal immigrants and their smugglers holed up on a drop house. A few days later Mexican drug smugglers ambushed a Pinal county sheriff’s deputy in a remote area of south Phoenix and shot him in the stomach. The rugged desert area is well known as a high traffic and drug smuggling corridor.

These incidents seem to indicate that the Secretary of Homeland Security is lying to Americans about securing the porous and increasingly dangerous southern border, according to legal watchdog group Judicial Watch.

Jim sent this in:

This week, the U.S. Department of Justice celebrated the one-year anniversary of Attorney General Eric Holder’s 2009 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) guidelines.

Issued exactly one year ago, Holder’s guidelines were supposed to aid President Barack Obama’s “new era of open government” by establishing a “criteria governing the presumption of disclosure” and creating “effective systems for responding to requests.” 

Unfortunately, after only the first year under these heralded guidelines, Judicial Watch reported on March 17 that its officials have experienced little improvement in U.S. government transparency or accountability.

In fact, a recent analysis finds that government secrecy has actually increased under Obama. Indeed, the first year of the Obama administration is ripe with examples of absent accountability and selective transparency. From the secrecy surrounding Obama’s czars, to the backroom deals in the health care legislation, there is little cause for celebration over Obama’s “new era of open government.”

During the celebration held in the Great Hall at the Robert F. Kennedy Department of Justice Building, the hour-long festivities featured several self-congratulatory speeches by FOIA representatives from the Department of the Treasury, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Defense, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Office of the United States Trade Representative.

Attorney General Holder made some short remarks touting the Justice Department’s work in creating a new era of transparency. According to Mr. Holder, President Obama has “delivered” on his pledge “to restore the sacred bond of trust that should exist between our nation’s government and its citizens.”

Holder also announced that the Justice Department will present an Open Government Plan on April 7, 2010. Ironically, the celebration of government transparency failed to feature a question and answer portion, a disturbing absence of transparency since there were dozens of reporters and opinion writers in attendance. 

Judicial Watch officials stated they did not encounter the idyllic open government that Eric Holder referenced in his celebratory remarks. In fact, the Justice Department, and specifically the Attorney General’s Office, has stonewalled Judicial Watch in a number of recent FOIA requests.

For example, in February, Judicial Watch attorneys filed a FOIA lawsuit against the Department of Justice to obtain documents related to Eric Holder’s decision to prosecute terrorist Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other 9/11 conspirators in New York federal court.

The lawsuit is the result of a complete failure by the Attorney General’s Office to comply with the statutory requirement to respond within a 20-day time period. Judicial Watch’s experience demonstrates that noncompliance is common practice with this Attorney General’s Office.

However, the facts surrounding the DoJ’s noncompliance with its own guideline did not prevent Monday’s celebrants from highlighting their accomplishments. They also avoided addressing – or even acknowledging – any problems with Obama administration transparency (other than the occasional ‘there is more work left to be done’ comment).

“Holder also used the oldest trick in the book: he made his official statement on a Friday afternoon during a busy news cycle,” Baker said.

“As part of Holder’s confirmation process, a list of legal briefs to the committee was turned over to senate staffers,” he said. And the list turned over to the Senate Judiciary Committee did not include filings in about seven cases.

The issue of Holder’s past legal papers came up after some Republicans asked why lawyers who had previously done legal work for terror detainees now had jobs in the Justice Department, something President Barack Obama successfully avoided discussing, and something conveniently overlooked by a Justice Department now saturated with Holder colleagues whose work records show they defended terrorism suspects and ‘Gitmo’ detainees.

Attorney General Eric Holder didn’t tell the Senate Judiciary Committee about at least six Supreme Court Amicus briefs he prepared or supported, his office acknowledged in a letter Friday, including two urging the Court to reject the Bush administration’s attempt to try Jose Padilla as an enemy combatant.

“It has come to our attention that some but not all briefs submitted to the Supreme Court by or on behalf of Attorney General Holder as counselor Amicus were supplied to the Committee in the course of his confirmation process last year. We regret the omission,” Assistant Attorney General Ronald Welch wrote to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy.  Sen. Leahy, who has his own problems with honesty dating back to the days of the cold war, has not indicated his committee will take any action against Justice Department executives and attorneys.

For example, Attorney General Eric Holder didn’t tell the Senate Judiciary Committee about at least six Supreme Court amicus briefs he prepared or supported, his office acknowledged in a letter Friday, including two urging the Court to reject the Bush administration’s attempt to try Jose Padilla as an enemy combatant.

While Holder and Obama can count on the support and loyalty of the majority of Senators and congressmen, some conservative lawmakers are not ignoring the AG’s suspected duplicitous behavior

While President Barack Obama watches his so-called national security team become politicized and partisan, some Democrats are attempting to put out the flames of Americans’ discontent with gasoline by sending a letter yesterday to the President endorsing civilian court trials for suspected terrorists. 

The key signatory of the letter urging Obama and his Attorney General Eric Holder to stick to their proverbial guns is none other than Senator Patrick Leahy, the chairman of the U.S. Senate’s powerful Judiciary Committee.

“Our system of justice is strong enough to prosecute the people who have attacked us,” said the Senator known to many in the law enforcement and intelligence communties as “Leaky” Leahy.

News coming out of the White House, and reported by Fox News Channel’s national security correspondent Catherine Herridge, indicates that President Obama will take a more active role in choosing a location to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other terrorists. Many security experts contacted by this writer say that Senator Leahy and other left-wing Senators are pressuring Obama to avoid adhering to Bush Administration strategies, including the use of military tribunals.

“While indicating it wasn’t his preference, Holder left open the possibility that Mohammed’s trial could be conducted before a military commission,” the Washington Post reported Friday.

The Legend of Leaky Leahy

While polls show a majority of Americans oppose civilian trials for terrorism suspects or enemy combatants captured on the battlefield, Senator Leahy and other far-left lawmakers are stubborn in their obsession to revamp the war on terrorism right down to the terminology used to describe attacks, terror groups, and terrorists’ theology-philosophy.

It is believed that Senator Leahy is responsible for leaks to the news media that are anti-military, anti-intelligence in nature.

Throughout his long political career, Leahy revealed a propensity to leak government secrets for his own political agenda. At one point his “nasty little habit” caused his removal from his vice-chairmanship of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said a former NYPD detective and military intelligence officer.

“This ‘leaker’ was kicked kicked off the Senate Intelligence Committee and he ends up chairing the Judicial Committee? Leahy should have been kicked out of the Senate by the voters in Vermont, not given an important chairmanship,” said Det. Sidney Farnces

Here’s a brief history of Sen. “Leaky” Leahy’s experience in handling top security information:

Senator Patrick Leahy was annoyed with the Reagan administration’s military strategy in the 1980s. At the time he was vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Therefore, “Leaky Leahy,” threatened to sabotage classified strategies he didn’t like.

Leahy “inadvertently” disclosed a top-secret communications intercept during a 1985 television interview. The intercept had made possible the capture of the Arab terrorists who had hijacked the cruise ship Achille Lauro and murdered a American citizen. But Leahy’s leak cost the life of at least one Egyptian “asset” involved in the operation.

In July 1987, it was reported that Leahy leaked secret information about a 1986 covert operation planned by the Reagan administration to topple Libya’s Moammar Gaddhafi. US intelligence officials stated that Leahy sent a written threat to expose the operation directly to then-CIA Director William Casey. Weeks later, news of the secret plan turned up in the Washington Post, causing it to be aborted.

A year later, as the Senate was preparing to hold hearings on the Iran-Contra scandal, Leahy had to resign his Intelligence Committee post after he was caught leaking secret information to a reporter. The Vermont Democrat’s Iran-Contra leak was considered to be one of the most serious breaches of secrecy in the committee’s 28-year history.

After Leahy’s resignation, the Senate Intelligence Committee decided to restrict access to committee documents to a security-enhanced meeting room.

Former Green Beret officer, now columnist and radio talk host, Geoff Metcalf is on record saying Leahy should have been indicted, arrested and tried long ago.

He’s known as a man who’s more than willing to speakout on issues he knows absolutely nothing about. In fact, while attempting to sound as if he were a legal scholar, he’s made several flubs. During a debate on the Geneva Conventions, for example, he finally admitted he wasn’t familiar with the provisions he was debating.

In the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, Leahy headed the Senate’s negotiations on the 2001 anti-terrorism bill, the USA Patriot Act.   He was more concerned with protecting the civil liberties of the enemy than providing protection for Americans.

Patrick Leahy is not known as a very honest man either. When Senator Dick Durbin compared US military personnel to Nazis, Leahy said that Durbin made no such comment. Then when told Durbin indeed made the statement on the floor of the US Senate, Leahy amended his own statement claiming Durbin’s comments were taken out of context. When the Durbin tirade was shown to Leahy, he began to denigrate Bush by saying he hurt the Iraqis as much as did Saddam Hussein.

Within the Beltway, Leahy is known as an extremely abrasive and “sneaky” man. He’s the only senator in recent history to have an otherwise mellow Vice President tell him to “go f— yourself.”

Image: Life

Jim sent this in:

An Islamic group and one of its top contacts within the U.S. Congress are in the midst of a plot to neutralize FBI counterterrorism efforts. And they’ve found a willing collaborator in Attorney General Eric Holder.

The news conference was scheduled following the release of autopsy results showing that Imam Luqman Ameen Abdullah was shot at least 20 times, including once in the back, as well as being found handcuffed in the prone position. However, there was no mention that Abdullah’s leader is serving a life sentence in prison for killing one cop and wounding another.

CAIR and other groups had called for an independent investigation of the shooting. On January 13, 2010, Rep. Conyers sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder to request that the civil rights division investigate both the October shooting and whether the FBI violated the Constitution by using informants in mosques.