Politicizing National Security

[malaise]

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2007/04/04/politicizing_national_security.php

<snip>
-The removal of eight U.S. Attorneys

-Another provision of the same PATRIOT reauthorization concerned National Security Letters, or NSLs, which had been the subject of §505 of the 2001 PATRIOT Act.

-A recent report from the Inspector General for the Justice Department describes how NSLs have been misused, and how the FBI has systematically failed to report or account for this.

-The final scandal is the result of the exceptional—and by that I mean rare as well as very good—work of Glenn Fine, the Justice Department’s Inspector General. Last month, Fine issued a report documenting inaccurate claims about the Justice Department’s reporting of terrorism prosecutions.
How do these things link together? The nexus is national security, and the putative need to act with expedition and ruthlessness. The common strand tying them together is the invocation of “national security” as a magical incantation to get Congress, and by extension the American public, to bend to the executive’s every wish. Call this the “24” model of security policy: the idea being that we live in a perpetual emergency, so every request for new power from the executive branch must be granted. Right now. Without question. Dammit!

In fact, this vision rests on false predicates (see the third scandal), is of little use (see the second) and accomplishes much of narrow partisan gain (see the first).

[malaise]

1. Shameless kick

Very good read

[pigpickle]

2. kick