Free Republic

Editor’s Note: Lawfare’s Board of Directors has published a post regarding this article and our editorial standards here. In the United States, the latest Iranian protests have sparked a kind of debate in which we argue fervently about whether the U.S. should tweet its support or just shut up. At the risk of making the Trump administration look moderate, I think we can choose between more than waving our hands and sitting on them. Remember, when the Iranian regime decided it didn’t like U.S. activities in Iraq, it found considerably more direct ways to express its disapproval. It just started...

‘Without a shot being fired, without even a clear sense of who the attacker is, much of the United States could find itself living in post-Katrina New Orleans, but without hope of a rescue anytime soon.” Stewart Baker, the founding policy director at the Department of Homeland Security under Pres. George W. Bush, makes this and other alarming announcements in his new book, Skating on Stilts: Why We Aren’t Stopping Tomorrow’s Terrorism. He explains why he’s so worried, what he learned about the ACLU, and more in an interview with National Review Online’s Kathryn Jean Lopez...

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff was not aware a Dubai-owned company was seeking to operate terminals in six U.S. ports and that his agency was leading the review until after the deal's approval, an administration official said yesterday. Mr. Chertoff's spokesman, Russ Knocke, told The Washington Times the issue rose no higher than the department's assistant secretary for policy, Stewart Baker. "[Chertoff] was not briefed up to this until after this story started appearing in the newspapers," Mr. Knocke said. Mr. Chertoff is the third Cabinet official to acknowledge he did not know his agency had signed off on the...

UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL Members of the presidential commission that examined U.S. intelligence failures told White House officials that they would resign en masse if President Bush did not ensure the nation's spy agencies cooperated with their inquiry -- and had to repeat the threat more than once. Laurence H. Silberman, the federal judge who was co-chairman of the inquiry, said he told officials, "If we did not get support from the White House at any time we ran into any difficulties, I and others would resign." Click to learn more... "I did occasionally have to remind the White House of...