Janet Napolitano

To keep the record straight on the details about Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, I want to do a quick recap:

• In 2007, under Bush, two of Abdulmutallab co-conspirators were released from Gitmo and sent to Saudi Arabia. (source)
• Abdulmutallab was given a visa to the United States in June 2008, despite being on the terrorist watch list because he “attended a reputable school” and “had money” (source).
• This past summer House Republicans kept stalling a bill to give more money to the TSA for extra screening and bomb detecting devices. (source)
• Currently the appointed head of the TSA is held up in Senate by Republican Jim DeMint (source)

And somehow all of this is Obama’s fault.

I want to clear this up right now. I called for Janet Napolitano to either resign or be fired today and I still stand by that. Her comments yesterday showed an individual afraid to take any responsibility and we can not tolerate that. Will any of the blogs on the right try to hold Republicans accountable for their contributions to this? Any at all?

If we want to be serious about fighting terrorism we must stop using it as a political tool. If we don’t do that then al Qaeda will continue to have victories. It’s enough of these childish “it’s his fault” games. Both parties and administrations have some fault in this, and to deny that is to treat terrorism like a childish game.

I’m going with Andrew Sullivan on this one:

Her latest interview on the Today show again reveals a total obtuseness. Yes, as was obvious from the original clip, it was clear she was referring to what happened after the incident occurred and the system does seem to have worked from then on. But before that? This was a massive failure by DHS, and you will notice she takes not a smidgen of personal responsibility for it.

Does she not realize how sick we are of government officials responding to obvious mistakes, errors and failures by bragging about what they did get right?

She is responsible for homeland security and scores of human beings nearly died because of her failure and survived solely because of luck and courage and the incompetence of the religious extremist.

This attitude was what enraged people about the Bush administration. If Obama wants to show he is not like that, he needs to fire Napolitano now, and explain why there are no excuses in his administration for failing to perform a core government function like ensuring that airline security is as fool-proof as possible. The rest of us have had to go through hell for years in airports only to see this happen.

If she won't resign, fire her.

Yesterday Napolitano said the system worked. Today she says it ‘failed’. This is the exact same lack of responsibility we saw during Katrina and our nation can not use another Brown leading a department that can directly affect rather people live or die. This was her first big test and she failed miserably, in a position where failure is synonymous with death. She either needs to resign or Obama needs to shit can her. Anything else is unacceptable.

That’s the reports going around this morning:

Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano (D) has been chosen to serve as secretary of the vast and troubled Department of Homeland Security for President-elect Obama, Democratic officials said. Napolitano is a border governor who will now be responsible for immigration policy and border security, which are part of Homeland Security’s myriad functions.

Napolitano brings law-and-order experience from her stint as the Grand Canyon State’s first female attorney general. One of the nation’s most prominent female elected officials, she made frequent appearances on behalf of Barack Obama during the campaign. She was re-elected to a second four-year term in 2006.

Napolitano is a centrist, but also a very reasonable one. There is some moaning going on in the Blogosphere that if Napolitano does accept the job we will be losing a governors seat and possible the best candidate against John McCain in 2010. I say oh well. If she is the best person for the job in the eyes of Obama, then we should support her. I’m sure we can find someone else to run against McCain and the Republican that would replace Napolitano as governor would have to run again in 2010 also. That’s a lifetime in politics and we can always see something else happen that turns the tides in our favor.