Sunday, November 23, 2008

Dept of Homeland Security's Incompetence

Yet another reason Homeland Security is America's most incompetent government agency:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/11/21/60minutes/main4625729_page3.shtml

The American government is spending our taxpayer dollars trying to deport wives of Americans, including dead soldiers, solely because their interview did not occur before the unexpected death of the husband. In the 60 Minutes segment, called "Immigrant Widows Left In Limbo," one mother-in-law tearfully says, "This is America." It's heartbreaking to learn just how incompetent the Department Homeland Security is. I am writing my Congresspersons in both the House and Senate.

And here I thought the federal government couldn't top its previous pinnacle of incompetence, which was improperly jailing an innocent man for seven years. Mr. Lakhdar Boumediene, a Bosnian of Algerian descent, was recently released by a judge--who was appointed by none other than George W. Bush himself. For the legal eagles, there's more about the Boumediene Supreme Court case here: The Most Significant Recent U.S. Supreme Court Case.

For even more on Mr. Boumediene, see WSJ, November 21, 2008, A6. The government jailed him for seven years on the basis of a "single, 'unnamed source.'" Basically, our United States government used secret evidence to jail a man on American-controlled soil for seven years, all the while insisting the man was not entitled to a trial. I'm with the mother-in-law featured on 60 Minutes, but I phrase her sentiment differently: "Is this the America we want, where the Department of Homeland Security appears to have no substantive checks on its powers and very little transparency?"

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