Janet Napolitano's image is taking hits
So says Politico. Leaving aside the Republican carping after the foiled Christmas Day terrorist attack, others are questioning her oversight:
who closely watch policy developments at DHS say they’re still waiting for real action from the new leader.“The agency seems to be on autopilot, pretty much following the ideas of the previous team (to the extent they had any). Even simple steps, like getting rid of the idiotic color code or ending DHS’s silly double clearance for new hires have eluded the new secretary,” said James Lewis, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, who said he dismisses the partisan attacks on Napolitano.
“It’s no secret that DHS has problems. There needs to be visible progress towards fixing them, and we haven’t seen any,” he said. “The lack of fresh thinking worries me. She needs to reset the agency, not just accept the inheritance and make it work smoothly.”
As for the Republicans, the lowest hit of all came from John Kyl and John McCain:
Republican critics, who already had Napolitano in their sights, spared no words in criticizing her — and show no inclination to stop.
One of them was her home-state senator, Republican Jon Kyl, who told reporters in Arizona that he no longer feels “totally safe” with his former governor at the helm of the Department of Homeland Security. Kyl was flanked at the Phoenix news conference by fellow Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain.
On the other hand she gets a sympathetic portrait from Maureen Dowd in the NYT this a.m.:
Janet Napolitano and I hadn’t planned to spend New Year’s Eve together.
But there we were on this soggy Thursday, sitting in her office on the outskirts of the city, beside a big, black leather saddle that was a gift from the governor of Sonora, Mexico, when Napolitano was governor of Arizona.
I was working on the last night of the decennium horribile dictu, so I had tried to think of who else might also be burning the midnight oil instead of clinking the midnight bubbly.
The answer was obvious.
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John Kyl's female trouble
Jennifer Johnson, a former Republic staffer who now works for the state Democratic party, goes after John Kyl in the paper’s op-ed page today, focusing on a few recent comments and votes that aren’t going to endear him to his female constituents.
Again, Johnson’s working for the Democratic party, but it’s hard to argue with her points:
First, he landed in the hot seat by dismissing Michigan Sen. Debbie Stabenow’s call for basic maternity care to be included in insurance plans. “I don’t need maternity care,” he stated during Senate debate.
An editorial in Tuesday’s Republic defended Kyl. He was “debating in the public’s interest” to keep costs down, the editorial stated. But Kyl, and The Republic, missed the point: Women are angry, not just because of Kyl’s remark, but because their senator claims he is fighting to keep costs down.
Down for whom? Maternity care costs women dearly. And women can be denied coverage because of so-called “pre-existing conditions” such as a C-section or a previous pregnancy.
And then there’s Al Franken’s mischievous Halliburton rape amendment:
Last week, Kyl voted “no” on an amendment that would block defense contracts with companies that prevent employees from suing over sexual assault. In other words, Kyl voted to protect the interests of corporations over the rights of sexual-assault victims.
The amendment had been proposed to prevent situations like that of Jamie Leigh Jones, a former contractor for Halliburton/KBR in Iraq who said she was drugged and brutally raped by a group of fellow contractors. Despite solid medical evidence, Jones was blocked from pressing charges in court because her defense contract prevented it.
Johnson, politely, doesn’t mention that the woman was also was held captive in a crate when she tried to report the gang rape.
Kyl voted on the side of the military contractor.
The Halliburton case, incidentally, caught the attention of the Daily Show last night:
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Rape-Nuts | ||||
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