Yesterday, Lieberman warned of the threat posed to our great land by those crazy Canuks. That's right, Canadians.
As chair of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, Lieberman requested a General Accountability Office report (your tax dollars at work) on the security threat stemming from the unguarded national border with the Great White North. Surprise, surprise, the GAO found that less than one percent of the 4,000-mile stretch between the U.S. and Canada is patrolled by security. Lieberman believes that finding “should sound an alarm” that the American people are grossly under-protected along our northern border.”
To that bombast, Rick Larsen, a Democratic Congressman from Washington state, said, “I think Senator Lieberman needs to get out more.”
Larsen, whose district includes 100 miles of border, says to imply that the boundary is unsafe does not recognize the “cooperation that occurs every day between local, state and federal law enforcement and the partners in Canada.”
Lieberman also noted that Canada now has more Islamist extremist groups than Mexico. While Joe frets about Mexican terrorists, the Dept. of Homeland Security last month canceled Boeing’s $1B “virtual fence” project that was supposed to wall off Mexico from Arizona. The Secure Border Initiative Network was proposed by President Bush in 2005. It estimated that up to one million illegals and tons of drugs cross into the U.S. from Mexico every year.
Joe is fixated on the wrong border.
More Lieberman fun and games surround the “Internet kill switch” that is featured in his “Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act.” The pride of the Nutmeg State is taking heat in the aftermath of the Egyptian government’s success in shutting down the Internet for five days after the outbreak of anti-Mubarak demonstrations.
CNET reports that a summary of the bill written by Lieberman’s committee says that if the President declares a “cyber emergency,” the DHS could “issue mandatory emergency measures necessary to preserve the reliable operation of covered critical infrastructure.” Those measures could include ordering computer, networks and websites disconnected from the Internet.
“Some have suggested that our legislation would empower the president to deny U.S. citizens access to the Internet,” said a statement from Lieberman and Sens. Susan Collins (Re-Me.) and Tom Carper (D-Del.). “Nothing could be further from the truth.”
They promise to fine-tune wording of the bill so it “contains explicit language prohibiting the president from doing what President Mubarak did.”
Trust us, says Joe.
The only trust Lieberman gets from this blogger concerns his promise about going home in 2013. Joe has been known to pull a switcheroo.
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