So yesterday was Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Michael Chertoff’s big day before the House Homeland Security Committee.

Chertoff came to the hearing armed with lots of charts and graphs. In his opening statement, he told a rosy story (more like a novel) about all of the department’s successes. The big fence project along the US-Mexico border was moving right along. Immigration raids were up. Bad employers were being punished, too. He went on and on for more than his allotted 5 minutes about how he had aligned programs, personnel and resources to achieve border security, topic A for the hearing.

When he finished, it was finally time for the first question – and well worth the wait.

Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-MS) told Secretary Chertoff that he had a letter from Congressman John Lewis (D-GA). It was from DHS and he needed it every time he attempted to fly. Thompson asked: How can we get Congressman Lewis off the no-fly list?

Before Chertoff answered, he asked him a few more zingers, like how many John Lewis’s were on the list? And wasn’t Senator Kennedy on there, too?

Chertoff promised to look into it, yet it sounded more like “the check’s in the mail.” It was hard to understand how this could be the first time that Secretary Chertoff has heard about John Lewis being on the terrorist watch list. A quick Google search netted over 50,000 results from big and small media outlets and websites.

And just this past Monday, the ACLU marked the one-millionth name recorded on the terrorist watch list. This number was calculated by the American Civil Liberties Union based upon the government’s own reported numbers for the size of the list.

It is time for Congress to recognize the Bush Administration’s security apparatus is an emperor without clothes. All those charts and graphs simply didn’t represent all the facts. The watch list is simply a bust.

For information about the ACLU call for a probe of Secretary Chertoff’s use of the terrorist watch list, go to: http://www.aclu.org/privacy/36026prs20080717.html

For information about the terror watch list, go to:

http://www.aclu.org/privacy/35968prs20080714.html

This entry was posted on Friday, July 18th, 2008 at 9:55 am and is filed under Politics .