Chertoff's Iron curtain

Something there is that doesn't love a wall, said the poet. I think it's called freedom.

Say you have a nice ranch down near the Rio Grande. The view is fabulous, you use the water for your cattle, you have a little boat to fish with. The deer and the antelope play.

Say you enjoy the San Pedro river, the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area on the Arizona border. You can forget it; it's soon to be blocked by a huge corrugated iron curtain right out of the cold war era because we're all so desperately afraid of Mexicans who don't come in to the country on tourist visas, like most illegal immigrants do.

This isn't a diatribe on any racialist or economic basis for xenophobia or the grave danger of people with expired visas cutting your lawn, it's about big government getting away with unquestionable authority by declaring emergencies. It's about Michael Chertoff's Bush-given ability to overturn court rulings and ignore laws passed by Congress because - well just because the commander guy has commanded it. Our Republican Congress gave him the power to waive any laws he needed to to get this fence built and our Republican courts in all their activist glory have now backed him up today by upholding a lower court's ruling that giving Michael Chertoff authority to write and unwrite laws passed by congress does not violate the separation of powers set forth in the constitution. Michael Cherthoff can be the law and neither we nor our elected representatives can stop him sayeth the Bush Court.

Somehow the people who give us the Fatherland and the Motherland seem awfully similar to the people who changed National Security into Homeland Security.

Many people sincerely doubt that this wall will actually secure our border and protect us from undocumented dishwashers. The history of walls lends them some support, but of course when things get bad enough here, perhaps it will help keep us from fleeing to Mexico.

Cross posted from The Impolitic

Chertoff's pet goat.

After Katrina blew past New Orleans, leaving thousands of people stranded on bridges and in the Morial Convention Center without food or water or medical help, Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff dismissed the reports as rumors. I think of it as his "my Pet Goat" moment and through his inaction it took five days after the storm hit before help arrived and questions still remain about the allocation and misuse of funds. According to New Orleans, Louisiana Blogger and TV commentator Jeff Crouere, quoting historian Douglas Brinkley, Chertoff actually worked to obstruct and impede aid coming in from the private sector.

Is this just the man to step into Alberto Gonzales' shoes at a time when the Justice Department looks like a Presidential goon squad? If as CNN is saying today, Chertoff's appointment as Attorney General is imminent and, considering an unbroken string of political appointments of underqualified party loyalists I don't doubt it, Congress and the Administration will be faced with two confirmation battles.

Since the pool from which Bush picks his fish is growing shallower by the day, this might be a good time to start some speculation and rumor about the next Homeland Security appointment. What about Henry Hager, a former staff member of the commerce department who is, by coincidence Jenna Bush's new beau?

Cross posted at The Reaction