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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