Abolish Trump or Homeland Security? Why not both?

Juliette Kayyem argues that, in Portland, Homeland Security isn't the problem -- it's Trump:

Seemingly desperate to goad Democrats into a fight over law and order, the White House has deployed federal law-enforcement agents from the Department of Homeland Security to Portland, Oregon, ostensibly to protect statues on federal property from vandals. Agents from Customs and Border Protection and other branches of DHS are wearing military fatigues, snatching demonstrators from the streets, and even attacking protesters who by all accounts are peaceful. The Constitution did not contemplate the mobilization of federal assets to fight a war on graffiti. Never having requested the president’s help, local and state politicians in Portland are outraged. Yesterday afternoon, Trump announced an expansion of the program to a number of other cities to “help drive down violent crime.”

These events offer a reminder of how much discretionary power every American president exercises—and why voters shouldn’t give the job to someone whose instincts are fundamentally authoritarian.

The only thing that needs to be abolished is the Trump administration. When the president is bent on using executive power for purely political ends, the specifics of the executive-branch organizational chart do not matter.

She's right on one point: A president bent on abusing his power is going to abuse his power. Trump couldn't use the military, ultimately, to achieve these ends -- so he turned to DHS instead.

But she's also wrong.

The framers of the Constitution got a lot of things wrong, IMHO -- we don't need the Senate -- but they did embrace an underlying thought process that was smart: One way to prevent a president from abusing his powers is to limit the tools he has for abuse.

With respect to Kayyem's (I'm sure) honorable service, the Department of Homeland Security was always particularly ripe for abuse by an authoritarian-minded president, from its name on down. I pointed out this week how one DHS agency, Customs and Border Patrol, is pretty much rogue to begin with, and offered some possible solutions.

The underlying idea is to limit the agency, both in terms of manpower and authority. "Trump and his cronies would surely look for other ways to crack down on protesters," I wrote. "He will abuse any power he has, and claim powers the Constitution doesn't actually grant him. Congress, however, doesn't need to make it easy for him."


So, yes, abolish Trump. But let's also make it harder for any would-be Trumps -- Tucker Carlson, say, or Tom Cotton -- to follow in his footsteps and do even more damage. Abolish Trump and the DHS.

Homeland Security, Gay Terrorists and the Tragedy of Gov. Ed Rendell

Big Brother

A couple of days ago I wrote that "the surveillance state always claims to be acting in the interest of our safety and security. Sometimes, it's even true." I was writing then about a 40-year-old incident involving the civil rights movement; luckily, the State of Pennsylvania has decided to offer us a fresh example:

HARRISBURG – Gov. Rendell said Tuesday that he was "appalled" and "embarrassed" that his administration's Office of Homeland Security has been tracking and circulating information about legitimate protests by activist groups that do not pose a threat to public safety.

Rendell said he did not know that the state Office of Homeland Security had been paying an outside company to track a long list of activists, including groups that oppose drilling in the Marcellus Shale, animal-rights advocates, and peace activists.

The office then passed that information on to large groups of people, including law enforcement and members of the private sector.

"Let me make this as clear as I can make it," the governor said at news conference Tuesday night, pounding his fist on the podium. "Protesting against an idea, a principle, a process, is not a real threat against infrastructure. Protesting is a God-given American right, a right that is in our Constitution, a right that is fundamental to all we believe in as Americans."

Nice words. Except for this:

Rendell said that he will not fire or discipline anyone in the Office of Homeland Security, headed by director James F. Powers Jr., for the lapse. But he said he ordered the office to terminate its contract with Philadelphia-based Institute of Terrorism and Research Response, which he said has been paid $125,000 in the last year to gather data about possible security threats.

That, my friends, is scapegoating. An outside contractor loses a nice little paycheck and that's supposed to be accountability. But "security" officials who received the information -- and published them in a thrice-weekly intelligence bulletin? They get to keep their jobs, even though they should've known better. They didn't know better -- which suggests that Gov. Rendell wasn't really setting a "protect the civil rights of Pennsylvanians" vibe in office.

Say, who were the "threats" anyway?

The bulletin included information about a PrideFest by gays and lesbians; a rally that supported his administration's education policy; and an anti-BP candlelight vigil.

The controversy over the Homeland Security Office's intelligence bulletins came to light after one became public last week. The August bulletin included a list of forthcoming - and mostly public - hearings involving Marcellus Shale natural-gas drilling, and noted that they would be attended by anti-drilling activists. It also listed a planned screening of the controversial movie Gasland in Philadelphia.

It's laughable, really. And our lame-duck governor gets to say a lot of nice words about rights without holding anybody in government responsible for infringing on those rights. So I don't believe Ed Rendell. The surveillance of peaceful protest groups happens too often -- here and elsewhere -- for a reasonable person to believe it's anything but business as usual. The problem, for government officials, is getting caught.