Daily Archives: May 31, 2007

9/11, amnesty, War on Terror

Immigration reform includes REAL ID repeal

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The ‘Jersey Girls’ must be racing to Washington, D.C., to angrily denounce President Bush. I am reading where they want to repeal REAL ID, a key recommendation of the 9/11 Commission’s report… Wait a minute… Reading further I see it is their heroes, the Democrats led by Senator Patrick Leahy, who are trying to repeal the act.

The Heritage Foundation’s James Jay Carafano writes today in the National Review Online:

The attitude senior congressional leaders have taken towards implementation of the REAL ID Act offers a lesson for those who actually believe that this Congress can be trusted to follow through on the promises made in the immigration-reform bill that is now on the floor of the Senate. The REAL ID Act implemented one of the key recommendations of the 9/11 Commission. It requires national standards for driver’s licenses, including an assurance that any identity card used for a federal purpose (like passing through a Transportation Security Administration security checkpoint before boarding a plane) only be issued to an individual who is lawfully present in the United States. The law also prompts states to adopt best practices to provide better information protection and combat identity theft, fraud, and counterfeit trafficking in identity documents. Measures in the immigration reform brokered in the Senate even acknowledge that the REAL ID requirements are vital for restoring the credibility of identity cards and the “breeder documents” (like birth certificates) that are used to obtain them [emphasis added mine].

When Congress passed REAL ID with bipartisan support [Ed. — The Senate passed the measure by unanimous consent. The House passed it by a vote of 368 to 58], it seemed pretty clear that REAL ID was real important. And so you can imagine my surprise when I was called, on almost no notice, to testify before the full Senate Committee on the Judiciary in a hearing earlier this month titled, “Will REAL ID Actually Make Us Safer? An Examination of Privacy and Civil Liberty Concerns.” Good question. Isn’t that something Congress should have done before passing the law? Well, as it happens, they did. Both houses held hearings on the proposal. Apparently, they must have missed something. The Judiciary hearing turned into a direct frontal assault on REAL ID. Before the first question had even been asked, Senator Patrick Leahy, the committee chair, announced: “Given my own concerns, I have joined with Senators Akaka, Sununu, and Tester to introduce a bill that would repeal the driver’s license provisions of the REAL ID Act.”

Support from the administration and its allies was not much better. Only one senator from the minority showed up and didn’t ask any questions. In addition, the administration provided no witnesses and has not requested sufficient appropriations to prompt states to move forward quickly to implement REAL ID.

REAL ID is in real danger of becoming bait-and-switch legislation where Congress talks tough and then fails to deliver the resources or demonstrate the resolve to follow through.

There is every reason to expect the same response to immigration reform.

It will be mildly interesting [yawn] to see who the “Girls” blame for this one. I hope they can rip themselves away from the 9/11 “truth” movement long enough to comment.

amnesty, Aviation Security, War on Terror

Flight 327: a Washington Times editorial

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A newly released report from the inspector general for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security about the government’s handling of 13 suspicious passengers on a June 29, 2004, Northwest Airlines flight serves as a reminder of why so many Americans are rightly skeptical of Washington’s ability to manage a mass-amnesty program. The report, which details what happened on the flight 327 from Detroit to Los Angeles, confirms eyewitness accounts describing suspicious behavior on the part of 12 Syrian musicians before and during the flight.

Initially, Homeland Security officials tried to downplay its seriousness and suggested that other passengers had overreacted. But the report corroborates the passengers’ accounts and suggests that what took place was a dry run for a terrorist attack — which first was reported by Audrey Hudson of The Washington Times. The report raises disturbing questions about the handling of the case by several agencies: Homeland Security, the Federal Air Marshal Service and the Citizenship and Immigration Services, which will play the lead role in overseeing the amnesty program for illegals.
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Pilots and former air marshals told this newspaper that federal security managers have been concealing information on dry run probes from other federal agencies and that most of our flights today do not have armed pilots or air marshals aboard. And yet the president and “immigration reform” supporters on Capitol Hill insist that the dysfunctional bureaucracies responsible for Flight 327 security are up to the task of overseeing mass amnesty for illegals.

Related report: DHS IG’s report confirms terror dry run aboard Flight 327