WASHINGTON — Facing criticism for her handling of federal stimulus money, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Wednesday that she would not start any new border construction projects while

Napolitano has faced questions since The Associated Press reported last month that Homeland Security officials did not follow their internal priority lists when choosing which border checkpoints would get money for renovations. Under a process that is secretive and susceptible to political influence, officials planned to spend millions at tiny checkpoints, passing over busier, higher-priority projects.

The criticism peaked Wednesday when a senior Senate Democrat, Byron Dorgan of North Dakota, said that, despite Napolitano’s assurances, he felt Homeland Security was treating the economic stimulus plan like a “bottomless pit” of taxpayer money. It was unusually pointed criticism from a member of the president’s own party about how the administration is handling economic recovery spending.

“There’s no common sense at all to a requirement that says you’ve got to put up a $15 million facility for a small port of entry that’s host to about five vehicles an hour,” Dorgan, whose state stood to receive $128 million for checkpoint improvements, said in a telephone interview.

Within hours, Napolitano promised not to begin any new border construction projects and set up a 30-day review of how the projects were selected.

“At the end of that review, I will make all information, not involving national security concerns, public,” Napolitano wrote in a letter to Dorgan.

So far, Homeland Security has refused to release its internal priority list or its justifications for deviating from it. Instead, officials say the final project list is all they need to make public.

For the rest of the article please go here:

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/09/16/napolitano-says-border-construction-halted-department-review-completed/

Face Fwd Coments:

With all of the shovel ready projects that were supposed to be ready, don’t you think that our government agency, Homeland Security, should have been ready to take advantage of the stimulus funds that came their way?  Perhaps, it is just another example of a government administration that can’t get it right. (and they want to run health care?)  Kind of scary when you consider this department is the one that is suppose to make us feel safe.  However, don’t despair America, the funds are being spent.  Here is a quote from another story that talks about how Janet as guided by earmarks from the Republicans and Democrats are spending your money.

Congress has allocated $132 million this year for the multi-state National Domestic Preparedness Consortium and $10 million for the National Institute for Hometown Security in Kentucky — an earmark from Rep. Hal Rogers, R-Ky. In addition, $57 million is being spent for the Center for Domestic Preparedness in Alabama, compliments of Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala..

Another $8 million is going for the Rural Domestic Preparedness Consortium in North Carolina, Tennessee, Iowa, Arkansas and Ohio. This is in addition to the $7 million already in the Center for Catastrophe Preparedness and Response in New York and the $120 million for an advanced training center in West Virginia, the result of several earmarks from former Senate Appropriations Chairman Robert Byrd, D-W.Va.

Don’t forget Sen. Pat Leahy’s, D-Vt., $1.7 million earmark for the National Center for Counterterrorism and Cyber Crime in Vermont. Or the $3.5 million each that was spent on cyber security at the University of Texas and the Cyber Security Test Bed and Evaluation Center in North Carolina.

Maybe they should have spent the money at a technical training institute to teach the students how to weld, drive nails and pour concrete.  At least we would have some people ready to build the fence when, if Janet ever gets her act together.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has scheduled a Wednesday vote on a State Department nominee who supports gun control on a global scale. While advocates of the Second Amendment have come to expect that appointees of President Barack Obama would be hostile to the rights of gun owners, the president’s nominee for legal advisor to the State Department reaches a whole new level of anti-gun extremism.  Harold Hongju Koh, who served at the State Department under the Clinton administration, is a self-described “trans-nationalist” who believes that our laws — and our Constitution — should be brought into conformity with international agreements.

“If you want to be in the global environment, you have to play by the global rules,” Koh told a Cleveland audience.

Koh’s positions treat our constitutional law as if it were a mere local ordinance on the greater world stage. This is of particular concern to gun owners at a time when the U.S. Congress is under pressure from President Obama to ratify an international gun control treaty with countries in the western hemisphere.  That treaty, known by its Spanish cronym CIFTA, would likely serve as a forerunner to a more extensive United Nations initiative, the “Program of Action to Prevent, Combat and Eradicate the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in all its Aspects.”

The Bush administration, under the leadership of UN Ambassador John Bolton , rejected the small arms treaty.  Bolton plainly told the world that the United States will not accept a gun control document that violates our Constitutional right to bear arms.  Harold Koh commented that Bolton was being “needlessly provocative.”

In a paper entitled “A world drowning in guns,” Koh maintains that a civil society cannot exist with broad gun ownership: “Guns kill civil society,” he said. Koh is eager to assume his post at the State Department, having lamented that there is only so much that can be done from the outside to push gun control treaties, and that ultimately we need people like him in positions of power.  The chief lawyer for the State Department is just the position someone like him needs to put his agenda into play.

While Koh’s nomination has been delayed largely because of Second Amendment concerns, Sen. Reid plans to force a vote this week. It is imperative that gun owners contact their Senators and insist that they vote AGAINST this anti-gun extremist. ACTION:  Please contact your Senators immediately and urge them to oppose Harold Hongju Koh’s nomination to the State Department.  You can use the Gun Owners Legislative Action Center at

http://gunowners.org/activism.htm

The FBI, the Federal Aviation Administration and the Liberty County Sheriff’s Department met Tuesday to compare notes on an unidentified flying object reported late last week by an ExpressJet Airlines pilot.

The pilot reported a “missile or rocket” flying near his airplane Friday at 8:09 p.m., shortly after takeoff from Bush Intercontinental Airport, according to sheriff’s officials.

“The FAA then contacted the Liberty County department dispatcher and reported their pilot reported an object flying straight at his aircraft and passed 100 feet under it,” said Ken DeFoor, chief deputy for the Liberty County Sheriff’s Department.

FBI spokeswoman Shauna Dunlap said the agency was aware of the sighting.

“While we have no information to indicate there was a criminal act we certainly do not rule anything out and certainly would not want to speculate on what it may or may not have been,” she said.

The flight was over the southern edge of Liberty County flying at 13,000 feet when the incident occurred, officials said. ExpressJet flies regional routes for Continental Airlines as Continental Express.

“We haven’t found anything yet — either something on the ground where it launched or on the ground where it came down,” said Liberty County Sheriff’s Cpl. Hugh Bishop.

DeFoor said the agencies consolidated their notes and information at the meeting.

“The FAA is in the process of debriefing the pilot today (Tuesday),” he said. “We are going to try and come up with a more definite track of this object and its path. We are trying to find out where it came from, where it went, and who may be responsible for it.”

The Continental Express jet was on a commercial flight to Greenville, S.C.

“No people were injured and no evasive action on part of the airplane was taken,” DeFoor said.

DeFoor said he was aware of local hobbyists who fire rockets but did not know if any were in the area at the time.

“We’re checking with club owners and presidents,” he said. “If we can get a correct track of what this object was there is no need to check with hobby fields.”

DeFoor said if the object was a rocket, it was fired illegally.

“They have to have permits to use the airspace,” he said.

In May 2008, a Continental Airlines pilot reported a similar incident.

See the rest of the story and more on the incident at: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/metro/6455016.html

Chuck Schumer said that the number of people captured between Oct. 1, 2008 and May 15 this year was down 27 percent from the same period the previous year.

Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer cited reports from the Customs and Border Protection officials saying that most of the decrease has been in the number of people taken into custody as they tried to illegally enter the U.S. along the border with Mexico. 

The New York senator said the lower demand for labor in the U.S. and stepped-up border enforcement measures are behind the decrease.

“The border is far more secure than it’s ever been,” Schumer said.

The Obama administration has promised to increase border security even more on the southern border to crack down on border violence and work with Mexican authorities against drug cartels. Hundreds of federal agents, along with high-tech surveillance gear and drug-sniffing dogs, are being deployed to the Southwest.
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Face Forward Comments:

I have to raise my hand on this on and call BS. I am pretty sure that this report is right up there with the reports that stated hundreds oops, no thousands of Mexican workers were going back across the border because of our poor economy and that 90% of the Mexican guns came from the US.

Note the phrase that Schumer uses, “take into custody”. If you tell the agents (ICE) that they cannot take people into custody and that you can no longer deport people found in raids……then sure the number drops. “The borders are far more secure than they have ever been”,certainly he not making that statement based the false data he used, is he? As a hack for his party, you don’t think he is trying to down play the illegal immigration problem so that amnesty will be pushed through, do you? Or perhaps he is still responding to all of the criticism the administration took for not closing the border from the swine flu outbreak. No matter his reason, it is political spin at its worst.