Coyote Gulch

Monday, December 6, 2004

9/11 Intelligence Reform Bill
TalkLeft: "No bill would be better than a bad bill, and as we've expressed repeatedly, this is a bad bill." Alas Ms. Merritt, the TV news reported tonight that it's going to pass by a wide margin.
5:58:38 PM

2008 Presidential Election
Western Democrat: "This is an assessment of which I agree with in general, but with one major exception. All of these yahoos, from Ralph Reed to Zell Miller, forget about the west."
5:56:03 PM

Denver November 2004 Election
Here's an in-depth look at Senator-elect Ken Salazar from the Denver Post [December 5, 2004, "Salazar reluctant to wave Hispanic banner"]. From the article, "As he becomes one of the Senate's two Hispanic members, Ken Salazar is going to be pushed into a role he is clearly uncomfortable with: a high-profile voice for Hispanics nationwide. He may push back, at first. Salazar resists being labeled Hispanic in much the same way golfer Tiger Woods dislikes others' attempts to identify him with any single racial category. Salazar's might be a smart position to take in a state that's 75 percent white and only 17 percent Hispanic. But experts agree the political reality is that Salazar will have no choice."
Here's a article about Salazar, written by Luis Toro, on the 5280 Weblog.
6:52:11 AM

2004 Presidential Transition
President has nomimated Bernard Kerik to lead the Department of Homeland Security, according to the Rocky Mountain News [December 6, 2004, "Homeland agency needs makeover"]. The editorial staff writes, "Despite the deep misgivings of the Bush administration and many in Congress, Homeland Security was hastily thrown together in the post-9/11 atmosphere of "do something, do anything." The department is an amalgam of 22 separate federal agencies with little in common except an often tenuous connection with "security." It employs 180,000 people and spends $36 billion a year. Predictably, the department has been beset by management problems and, indeed, may be unmanageable. Kerik's background is big-city police work - he was New York police commissioner - so he knows his way around a bureaucracy. We hope Kerik will speak up loudly about how Homeland Security can be made to work. He could start by reforming the most visible part of the department, the Transportation Security Administration, which has transformed air travel into a humiliating experience. His first day on the job, Kerik should issue a simple directive: Quit groping the citizens on a random basis. Reserve body searches to cases in which there is actual cause for suspicion."
Josh Marshall: "In the course of his confirmation hearings, Bernard Kerik may be able to shed some unique light on decision-making in the early days of the Iraq occupation. Here's what interests me most..."
6:31:41 AM

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