#5: Interagency Cooperation, The Missing Piece of the Puzzle Eight years after the September 11 attacks, Congress has enacted legislation in order to keep America safe. They created the Department of Homeland Security not just to integrate the activities of over two dozen agencies and programs, but also to lead …
Meeting with his counterparts from Mexico and Canada earlier this month, President Barack Obama said that he expected the Democratic-controlled Congress, after completing work on health care, energy and financial regulation, to draft comprehensive immigration reform bills this year. This time frame acknowledges that no immigration legislation will be passed …
This evening John McCain and Barack Obama will appear together (but speak separately) as part of a nationally televised forum at Columbia University in Manhattan. The two presidential candidates have promised to set aside politics to commemorate the seventh anniversary of the 9/11 attacks and will instead lay out their …
Kentucky is to be the recipient of $11.9 million federal dollars in pork. A Kentucky news station reported that the money was “to increase preparedness and response measures across the state,” however such federal grants are actually undermining state homeland security preparedness measures. According to a Heritage WebMemo by Homeland …
Maryland announced this week that the state government plans to create a single communications system for all of the state’s first responders, as noted in a recent article in The Examiner. Ensuring effective emergency communications remains an important issue on the nation’s homeland security to do list. A Heritage paper …
With an estimated 12 million to 15 million illegal immigrants in the United States, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) certainly has a lot on its plate. However, many are now criticizing ICE for its lack of action not against illegal immigrants, but American citizens. In raids since October 2007, ICE …
Disaster management is over-federalized. This chart from a recent Heritage Backgrounder, The Local Role in Disaster Response: Lessons from Katrina and the California Wildfires, makes it abundantly clear. With the exception of the Johnson and Reagan administrations, the number of federal disaster declarations has steadily and dramatically grown. By the end …
As tornadoes and flooding torment the Midwest, citizens are working together to protect the cities and towns they call home. But that’s no average Joe in this photo — it’s Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff. So with five states under federal disaster declarations since the beginning of June alone, what’s wrong with this picture? …
