"So, what happens if Hillary Clinton doesn’t run in 2016? It is hard to imagine the presidential field without a woman contender..."

"... and here’s one to keep your eye on: Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. Napolitano is quietly making it known that she is considering the race, and there is reason to take her seriously...."

"Will Obama Free the Blind Sheik?"

A WSJ op-ed by Michael B. Mukasey, who presided over the trial of Omar Abdel Rahman and sentenced him to life in prison.

Abdel Rahman was convicted in 1995 of participating in a seditious conspiracy that included the [Meir] Kahane murder, the 1993 WTC bombing, and a plot to blow up other landmarks in New York and to assassinate Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak when he visited the United Nations....

In 1997, members of Abdel Rahman's organization... murdered more than 60 tourists at Luxor, Egypt, and inserted notes in the body cavities of several victims demanding the Blind Sheik's release. Also in the mid-1990s, Abdel Rahman contrived from jail to issue the fatwa that Osama bin Laden cited as authorization to carry out the 9/11 attacks. The sheik's confinement was on bin Laden's list of grievances meant to justify that atrocity.

... Abdel Rahman has been a totemic figure to Islamists since 1981, when his pronouncements gave a group of Egyptian army officers the spiritual justification for assassinating President Anwar Sadat. The officers were hanged, but Abdel Rahman successfully defended himself at trial by arguing that he had simply been opining on issues of Islamic law and should not face censure for that in a Muslim country.

Mukasey reviews the evidence that the Obama administration is contemplating releasing him, including the "excruciatingly lawyered" sounding statement of officials. For example, Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, who, before Congress, asked "whether there is an intention 'at any time to release the Blind Sheikh,'" said, "Well, let me just say this. I know of no such intention."

"A veteran US law-enforcement official has filed a blockbuster discrimination lawsuit against Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano..."

"... charging she pushed him aside to make way for a less-qualified woman who’s 'enjoyed a long-standing relationship' with the anti-terror chief."

The lawsuit... identifies the woman as Dora Schriro, who was later appointed by Mayor Bloomberg as commissioner of the city Department of Correction, a post she still holds.

The court papers also allege that Suzanne Barr, Napolitano’s chief of staff at Immigration and Customs Enforcement, has engaged in “numerous” acts of “sexually offensive behavior” intended to “humiliate and intimidate male employees.

Barr’s alleged acts include calling one man “in his hotel room and screaming at him that she wanted his ‘c--k in the back of [her] throat.’ "

ADDED: Blogger Debbie Schlussel broke the story — and is irked that major newspapers didn't credit her.

"Rob Portman had flowing locks. Rand Paul dissects a cat."

Pictures of politicians, when they were in high school. Don't miss Scott Walker "the Desperado."

My favorite is Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano:

"Today we are thrilled to unveil DHS’s new website, StudyintheStates.dhs.gov."

Great moments in government website creation:

Today we are thrilled to unveil DHS’s new website, StudyintheStates.dhs.gov.

It’s with great pleasure that I was fortunate to attend the unveiling of the Study in the States website by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano at the University of Wisconsin – Madison today.

Together with our partner agencies...

You can read more about the Study in the States initiative on the DHS blog.

The crossed-out link in the post title and the "partner" link only trigger a drop-down box that demands a name and password. If you try to go in without the name, you're informed that you lack authorization. All the strikeouts above are on the web page that Janet Napolitano came to Madison yesterday to publicize.

I refrained from attending the big event. But Meade was there and he snapped this pic:

Janet Napolitano speaks in Madison today.

She's going to talk — and answer questions — about "innovative ways to encourage the 'best and brightest' international students and scholars to study and remain in the U.S."

2­–3 p.m. in Varsity Hall at Union South, on campus. The UW website says: "All faculty, staff and students are invited to attend."

2 Harvard law students sue Janet Napolitano and the TSA administrator over the airport scanning and groping.

They say it violates the 4th Amendment.

IN THE COMMENTS: lyssalovelyredhead said:

On a related note, I heard from a lawyer today... that his client, an employer, is being sued by a frequent flying employee, who is alleging forced flying under these conditions constitutes hostile work environment.

I'm searching for video of Janet Napolitano doing a decent job of explaining the new TSA procedures.

I'm working on the thesis that such video does not exist. Please disprove it if you can. I came up with this video, which is interesting for a lot of reasons. Napolitano appears at 1:22 and is laughably unconvincing:



(Most of the video is about San Mateo County's Chief Deputy District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe threatening to prosecute for sexual assault. Love the name "Wagstaffe" in this context.)

"Don't touch my junk." It's the new "Don't Tread on Me."

Says Charles Krauthammer.

Don't touch my junk is the anthem of the modern man, the Tea Party patriot, the late-life libertarian, the midterm election voter. Don't touch my junk, Obamacare - get out of my doctor's examining room, I'm wearing a paper-thin gown slit down the back. Don't touch my junk, Google - Street View is cool, but get off my street. Don't touch my junk, you airport security goon - my package belongs to no one but me....

Do you remember how the government presented this newly intensified bodily search? Why did the Obama administration — which I associate with opposition to enhanced interrogation techniques used on terrorists — adopt enhanced pat-downs on ordinary citizens to protect us from terrorists? Was it done because of the introduction of the enhanced imagining scanners? I really don't know. Did the government explain this to us when I wasn't paying attention? Because I monitor the news for hours every day, and I don't know the explanation.

It seems to me that these 2 things happened together: new machines that see you naked and newly intense body searches. Am I wrong to believe that the new groping procedure was intended to get more people into the scanners they would otherwise resist? Someone, at some level of the Obama administration, decided that the only way to channel people into the see-you-naked machines was to make the alternative more offensive to nearly everyone. Personally, I'd take the grope over being seen naked, but I did a poll yesterday, and I see that the scanner is significantly more popular than the grope.  I suspect that was the calibration. And I suspect that if too many people choose the grope over nakedness, the plan is to intensify the grope until they get the scanner acceptance rate they need.

But why were the scanners introduced when they had to know people didn't want them? With healthcare reform, the Obama administration became associated with ramming things down our throats. The government knows what we should want and doesn't bother to find out what we do want or even to persuade us to want what they think we should. The scanners are the ultimate graphic example of forcing something on us without asking. We're only asked: Well, would you prefer to have us feeling all around your genitals? That's the kind of consent of the governed we're facing these days.

But why push the scanners on us? Do you remember hearing Obama or Janet Napolitano or anyone say anything persuasive about why these machines were bought? (Suddenly, I want to follow the money. For that, I will  move to a new post.)

(In my unscientific poll, 73%  of those who would keep flying, picked the scanner over the grope. I suspect the government needs a better acceptance rate than that to keep the lines flowing and justify the investment in the machines. But most of those of us who picked the grope haven't been groped yet, and if being seen naked becomes the norm, more of us may fall into that brain-dulled line that shuffles into the machine.)

A late night Drudgtaposition.

It's all in the hands:



What is Drudge trying to say about Janet Napolitano?