And now for me to pull a capone and bash on my team.

I know some of you lefties out there who occassionally think I am a bushite (Henry you know who you are) but I am going to take this moment and beat on my own team -and hey don't worry it also beats on their team to-

So Chertoff is coming out defending some criticism of the DHS

Well let me take a moment to give a big wave of criticism to the DHS

If the FBI/CIA/INS/Border Patrol/Other alphabet soup agencys did their job we'd not need the department of homeland security....

but with things like Able Danger, the Minneapolis FBI office, the folks in the Phoniex Field office, The CIA monitoring some of the September 11th terrorists in big al-qaeda meetings over seas...etc.... The Government before it expanded had no real problem with getting the information to thwart terrorists at all.

So why do we need a new agency and a new presidential appointee ? the answer is -yes virginia- we sure as heck don't need them at -ALL-

We have the stuff to do the job super fine. We just however are not -gasp- doing the job.

I want to tell you I unequivocally and strongly reject this attempt to drive a wedge between our concerns about terrorism and our concerns about natural disasters," Chertoff said.

His strong defense of his agency, in response to criticism by ex-federal disaster chief Michael Brown and others came as a congressional report blamed government-wide ineptitude for mishandling Hurricane Katrina relief.

Chertoff was announcing wide-ranging changes to the nation's embattled
Federal Emergency Management Agency. The changes range from creation of a full-time response force of 1,500 new employees to establishing a more reliable system to report on disasters as they unfold.

Here is the problem...back in the olden times FEMA was an independent agency and it was for a good reason. If their was a disaster FEMA needed to be able to act quickly without calling mom and dad and asking if it was OK. The problem o course came into being when a "perfect storm" of events occured.

-Poor Organization
-Poor co-operation with local authorities
-poor co-operation with local agencies

now add on top of this the new top-down managment and we saw a break down in the system.

Now the Democrats realizing that this is retarded proposed a great reform of their own

Democrats on the House Homeland Security Committee issued their own recommendations Sunday for changing FEMA, including having the agency's director report directly to the president during major disasters. They also said the director should be an experienced emergency manager.

I have a better one

ELIMINATE D-HS

Instead of doing that eliminate the laws and regulatory red tape that prevented the inter-agency co-operation from working.
Start liquidating the managers that promoted the culture of feudalism that this was the "FBI's" glory and instead promote a culture that you have a job to do so do it.

I have yet to see argument #1 to justify why we have a department of Homeland Security. Now we could create something like the NSC... where we could take the kind of regulatory power to streamline key issues... but give the agencies the freedom/autonomy/and flexibility to do their job