interesting article about Chertoff's appointment to head DHS . . .

[OneBlueSky]

Bush’s Homeland Security czar Mike Chertoff and his days in New Jersey
by Doug Ireland
LA Weekly
January 14-20, 2005

http://www.laweekly.com/ink/05/08/news-ireland.php

(snip)

Long active in the Federalist Society — a conspiratorial brotherhood of legal reactionaries — Chertoff, at Justice, helped to write the civil-liberties–shredding Patriot Act. He was John Ashcroft’s honcho in the indiscriminate grilling of over 5,000 Arab-Americans after 9/11, devised the use of "material witness" warrants to lock up people of Middle Eastern descent and hold them indefinitely without trial, and on behalf of the Justice Department wrote a brief (in Chavez v. Martinez) arguing that there was no constitutional right to be free of coercive police questioning.

Moreover, Chertoff wrote legislation, known as the Feeney Amendment, that gutted federal sentencing guidelines, under which federal judges were allowed to use some discretion when sentencing criminal defendants, by preventing judges from shortening sentences — and, moreover, required judges who deviated from the Feeney Amendment to have their names and actions reported to the Justice Department, thus establishing what Senator Teddy Kennedy denounced as a judicial "blacklist."


Why would Chertoff give up a lifetime seat on the federal bench to take a job in the hornets’ nest of problems that is the DHS? According to a top Jersey Democratic pol who knows Chertoff well, Chertoff — described as being "as cold-blooded as they come" — has a personal agenda that includes becoming U.S. attorney general and, eventually, grabbing a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court. But there’s a problem for Chertoff with conservative Republicans — he happens to be pro-choice. So, taking the DHS job is Chertoff’s way to "make his bones," as they say in Jersey, and make headlines as a hard-line persecutor of "the towel-heads" to please the right and neutralize his abortion stance.

But Chertoff has zero experience in running anything remotely resembling the DHS, a mammoth with 180,000 employees and 22 federal agencies under its umbrella. He was picked for two reasons: his political loyalty to Bush (he won’t go off the reservation on his own as Tom Ridge did) and the fact that he’s already been confirmed by the Senate thrice, so he has no hidden Kerik problems and will sail through with little or no opposition from the spineless Democrats (he’s already been endorsed by Senators Chuck Schumer and Joe Lieberman for the DHS job). But choosing someone on the basis of confirmability rather than qualifications is dangerous — as is the choice of a hyper-ambitious Torquemada for a job with enormous power over our already-reduced rights and liberties, which will no doubt be further eroded under Chertoff.

- more . . .

http://www.laweekly.com/ink/05/08/news-ireland.php

[daninthemoon]

1. I believe he was also involved in the whitewater persecutions.

Once again, where is the congressional oversight?

[KT2000]

2. he has to go

more stories are connecting him to the debacle. Wonder what Michael Brown would have to say about him?

[Robertwf]

3. Another Dust Bunny

Chertoff will only get swept out if the public keeps him in the news as an incompetent unable to run protect the citizenry from real time disasters. B*** won't show him the door--he'll have to get the boot from Karl and others who are more influential.
There is plenty of dirt out there, so get out the vacuums and clean up the Homeland.