The Black Republican

The Washington Post, in an article from Saturday, reports that the House version of a bill to enact portions of the 9/11 Commission's final recommendations includes extra border security and improved police powers to combat terrorism.

The House's 335-page bill would make it easier to deport immigrants who have run afoul of the law and to secretly monitor terrorist suspects who have no known affiliation with hostile groups or governments. It would increase penalties for making false statements in terrorist investigations and for failing to secure airplane cockpit doors, and it would make the FBI's mandatory retirement age 65 instead of 60.

These are the recommendations the Democrats are having a cow over: they aren't interested in really improving security, just in enacting whatever the 9/11 Commission says they should do (without Congress actually reviewing the recommendations to find out if they're really necessary on the one hand or sufficient on the other) and beating the Republicans over the head if they dare to do anything but write out the blank check.

But Rep. Jane Harman (Calif.), the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee, said the measure was loaded with controversial items likely to sink it unless they are removed during committee meetings next week or on the House floor. "There are some folks out to kill the whole thing," she said.

Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said the bill was "written behind closed doors" and "goes far outside the recommendations of the 9/11 commission."

(my emphasis)

They're "controversial" because the Democrats don't want them to be anything less - besides, it'd be so easy to restyle "border security" as "anti-impoverished Mexican immigrant bigotry" and "secretly monitor terrorist suspects" as "Big Brother tearing apart the Bill of Rights". Why bother doing what's best for America, when you can gain a few polling points with key constituencies before an election?

Let's face it: the House leaders wrote this "behind closed doors" because there's no way to get through writing a 335-page bill when the minority runs out to the steps to hold a press conference every time a staffer dots the i's in "illegal alien". What's so friggin' wrong with going outside the 9/11 Commission recommendations to add more teeth to the dogs of war?

The chance that FOS11 is anything but a bunch of Democratic shills cloaked in the appearance of 9/11 self-pity is diminishing rapidly.