Free Republic

An exodus of top-level officials from the Department of Homeland Security is undercutting the agency’s ability to stay ahead of a range of emerging threats, including potential terrorist strikes and cyberattacks, according to interviews with current and former officials. Over the past four years, employees have left DHS at a rate nearly twice as fast as in the federal government overall, and the trend is accelerating, according to a review of a federal database. The departures are a result of what employees widely describe as a dysfunctional work environment, abysmal morale, and the lure of private security companies paying top...

During an answer to another lawmaker about how to prevent terrorists from going undetected inside the United States, Johnson made the absurd argument that a "legal process" for citizenship would prevent terror infiltration and encourage terrorists to come forward and turn themselves in. That suggestion is not only unhelpful but politically motivated garbage. Second, if Johnson got out of his cushy D.C. office once in awhile to actually talk to Border Patrol agents on the ground, he would know that radical Islamists crossing the southern border into the United States from Mexico is nothing new. Unfortunately, a lack of enforcement...

Jewish Home party chairwoman MK Ayelet Shaked responded Monday morning to reports that the Egyptian government had offered the Palestinian Authority a state extending from Gaza through the Sinai Peninsula, and called on Prime Minister Netanyahu to take it seriously. Aiming a barb at the Israeli Left, she said the initiative proved how out of touch they were. "If the report is indeed correct, the president of Egypt has managed to understand what the Left in Israel has refused to understand for decades." She asserted that the solution to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian "needs to be regional,...

House Homeland Security Committee chair Michael McCaul said this afternoon on CNN that 100-200 Americans are currently fighting for ISIS in Iraq and Syria: Said CNN host Wolf Blitzer, "The numbers we've heard, and you're the chairman of the committee so you probably have more precise numbers, maybe a dozen Americans have actually gone over to Syria and Iraq to join ISIS. Is that right?" "No, that number is actually much larger than what you stated,

Terrorism expert Brigitte Gabrielle seemed to confirm what many suspected and feared on Judge Jeanine’s show on Saturday night. She said that Homeland Security are monitoring suspected members of ISIS already in America, and they’re afraid that others might be coming in through our porous border.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A company that performs background checks for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said on Wednesday it was the victim of a cyber attack, adding in a statement that "it has all the markings of a state-sponsored attack." The computer breach at Falls Church, Virginia-based US Investigations Services (USIS) probably involved the theft of personal information about DHS employees, according to the Washington Post, which first reported the story. DHS has suspended all work with the company amid an investigation by the FBI, the Post reported. A U.S. government official confirmed to Reuters that the FBI is...

Why exactly a “national homeland for Jews” would be acceptable to “Palestinian” Islamic supremacists in a way that “Jewish state” isn’t remains unclear, but the “Palestinians,” as maximalist and unilateral as ever, have already rejected the proposal, so we will probably never glimpse the arcane reasoning processes of the formidable Kerry. “Report: Kerry suggests defining Israel as ‘national homeland for Jews,’” by Roi Kais for Ynet News, March 29 (thanks to Jerk Chicken): US Secretary of State John Kerry is trying to overcome the controversy surrounding the recognition of Israel as a Jewish state by changing the definition to “the...

James Rebhorn has died at the age of 65. The veteran character actor passed away at his home on Friday afternoon (March 21). Rebhorn is known for starring in Scent of a Woman opposite Al Pacino as Mr Trask and Independence Day as Secretary of Defense Albert Nimziki.

Medea Benjamin, left sans vagina costume, leads group meeting Homeland Security Sec. Jeh Johnson, photo by Code Pink.It’s an Obama world. As the United States faces a Cold War showdown over Russia annexing Crimea and an international passenger jet having seemingly disappeared, Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson met with leaders of the terrorist support group Code Pink at Homeland Security headquarters in Washington, D.C. on Monday. Medea Benjamin wipes her feet on ‘Homeland Security’, photo by Code Pink.It is another feather in the cap of a group that has a history of working with terrorists and state sponsors...

They killed off Brody, and now it looks like Saul will have less of a role to play. Two of the best characters have for all intents and purposes, been taken out at once. I was expecting a cliffhanger, not Carrie walking out making a star on the wall. Curious what others thought?

It took more than two months, but on Thursday Dee Holden found out her Georgia driver’s license had been renewed. “I was so relieved and so thankful,” she said. Holden, a Whitfield County resident, first went to the Dalton office of the Department of Driver Services in August to have her license renewed. A Georgia license holder for almost 40 years, she thought the visit would be routine. “I went Aug. 15. I called first, and the phone message gave me directions. I was sitting there and I saw something that said you have to have bills and you have...

Above: Obama's DHS Secretary-designee Jeh Johnson, former DOD General Counsel who led the reversal of the Pentagon's "Don't Ask Don't Tell" restrictions on "gays in the military".- Barack Obama once again demonstrated his lack of interest in choosing national security and immigration enforcement officials who have actual experience in their fields. Back in August, Obama surprised many in D.C. by selecting John Sandweg for new Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Director - despite the fact that Sandweg had zero law enforcement experience and had fought for the release of violent sexual predators and pedophiles as an attorney. Now Obama continues...

An off-duty federal officer who fired his gun at a car that cut him off has a history of aggressive behavior, according to news reports. Angel Echevarria, an officer with the Department of Homeland Security, was recently arrested and charged with aggressive assault and shooting into an occupied vehicle in Boca Raton, Fla. after opening fire on a red Toyota that had committed a traffic infraction. According to the arrest affidavit, Echevarria claimed he was trying to shoot the tires of the Toyota to prevent it from fleeing the scene. But authorities concluded that too much time has elapsed between...

An off-duty federal officer who fired his gun at a car that cut him off has a history of aggressive behavior, according to news reports. Angel Echevarria, an officer with the Department of Homeland Security, was recently arrested and charged with aggressive assault and shooting into an occupied vehicle in Boca Raton, Fla. after opening fire on a red Toyota that had committed a traffic infraction. According to the arrest affidavit, Echevarria claimed he was trying to shoot the tires of the Toyota to prevent it from fleeing the scene. But authorities concluded that too much time has elapsed between...

The Center for American Progress reported that since the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, 56 percent of domestic terrorist attacks and plots in the United States were perpetrated by right-wing extremists, whereas 30 percent were perpetrated by eco-terrorists and just 12 percent by Islamic extremists.

Federal authorities are boosting security in the United States after intelligence agencies detected a credible threat to Western interests overseas and the government began closing diplomatic posts in some Muslim countries, according to homeland security officials. The Department of Homeland Security is increasing security measures at airports, train stations and other transportation hubs, and expanding scrutiny of visitors coming into the United States, two officials told ABC News. The FBI, meanwhile, is "working sources" and taking other "logical steps" to monitor any potential threat, an FBI official said.

Americans now have responsibility for a bunch of new places they can’t find on a map. It turns out that the National Security Agency considers Canada, Greenland, Mexico and parts of Central America as part of the U.S. “Homeland.” During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday, California Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein — chairwoman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence — displayed a diagram that revealed the NSA considers Mexico, Canada, Greenland and parts of Central American as part of the U.S. ‘Homeland.’ The diagram displayed by Feinstein visualized the 54 events around the world allegedly disrupted by the...

There seems to be a lot of confusion about what the NSA is actually doing. Are they reading our emails? Are they listening to our telephone calls? Do they target American citizens or is it only foreigners that they are targeting? Unfortunately, the truth is that we aren’t going to get straight answers from our leaders about this. The folks running the NSA have already shown that they are willing to flat out lie to Congress, and Barack Obama doesn’t exactly have the greatest track record when it comes to telling the truth. These are men that play word games...

WASHINGTON (CBSDC/AP) — U.S. border agents should continue to be allowed to search a traveler’s laptop, cellphone or other electronic device and keep copies of any data on them based on no more than a hunch, according to an internal Homeland Security Department study. It contends limiting such searches would prevent the U.S. from detecting child pornographers or terrorists and expose the government to lawsuits. The 23-page report, obtained by The Associated Press and the American Civil Liberties Union under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, provides a rare glimpse of the Obama administration’s thinking on the long-standing but controversial...

Brazil's borders are so vast, and the terrain so inhospitable, that attempting to secure them has seemed a virtually impossible task. But Brazil's rapidly expanding economy has made the country a magnet for illegal immigration, and other illicit activities, and now the country has announced its own border protection program. Called the Sistema Integrado de Monitoramento de Fronteiras and known by its Portuguese acronym, SISFRON, it is intended to act as a virtual border shield along a frontier that stretches more than 10,000 miles and is shared with 10 other countries. The sheer size of the terrain that will be...