Last week, President Obama issued a request for $60.4 billion for Hurricane Sandy response and recovery. Yet as the fiscal cliff continues to loom nearby, many on Capitol Hill are asking exactly where that money would come from. While House Speaker John Boehner (R–OH) has indicated that he is still …
Early this morning, news broke of an attempted terrorist attack against U.S. military targets in Afghanistan. A federal complaint unsealed yesterday alleges that four men—all U.S. citizens or permanent residents—were engaged in an active plan to carry out “violent jihad” and target U.S. government facilities in Afghanistan. From the news …
On Tuesday, Wired chastised the New York Army National Guard for its decision to continue to send 450 guardsmen to a training exercise in Missouri despite the events of Hurricane Sandy. The article writes: “It seemed like a good use of troops—until their fellow guardsmen were suddenly called in to …
A New York Times editorial published in the midst of Hurricane Sandy’s devastation has received a good deal of attention. The article argued that “A Big Storm Requires Big Government,” politicizing and distorting calls for reform of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). A response by The Wall Street Journal, …
In the world of cybersecurity, all eyes are on the White House as experts speculate on President Obama’s plans to issue an executive order to secure the cyber sector by administrative fiat. Yet, according to drafts circulating Washington, Obama’s executive order wouldn’t be focused on cybersecurity alone. Instead, the Administration’s …
Yesterday, the House Homeland Security Committee held a hearing on the state of the Transportation Security Administration 11 years after 9/11. Appearing before the committee, my colleague James Jay Carafano explained: It is certainly fitting that we pause to reflect on the state of transportation security on the anniversary of …
The Texas Department of Agriculture has launched an online video campaign aimed to “shame” the federal government into enhancing U.S. border security. As part of the campaign, called “Texas Traffic—True Stories of Drug and Human Smuggling,” each week over the next four months the Department of Agriculture will release a …
Reports are circling again this week that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) continues to overstate its deportation numbers. After boasting the highest number of removals of illegal immigrants in agency history late last year, DHS was criticized by Representative Lamar Smith (R–TX) for artificially inflating its deportation numbers by …
In a New York Times op-ed yesterday, Christine Todd Whitman, former Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), called for greater regulation of the U.S.’s chemical sector, claiming that the current Chemical Facility Antiterrorism Standards (CFATS) program isn’t doing enough to protect the American people: The policy bars the Department …
