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From American Progress:

HOMELAND SECURITY -- BUSH CONTINUES TO NOMINATE UNQUALIFIED PEOPLE:

President Bush has nominated Julie Myers, whom the Washington Post described as "a lawyer with little immigration or customs experience," to head the troubled U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE), part of the Department of Homeland Security. At her Senate hearing last week, Sen. George Voinovich said that her "résumé indicates she is not qualified for the job" and that he would like to speak with DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff "to ask him… why he thinks you’re qualified for the job." Myers does know people in all the right places. She was chief of staff to Chertoff in the Justice Department, associate under Kenneth W. Star, special assistant to Bush on personnel issues, recently married to Chertoff's current chief of staff John F. Wood, and is the niece of Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers. Myers largest management experience comes from her time at Commerce, where she oversaw 170 employees and a $25 million budget; ICE has more than 20,000 employees and a budget of approximately $4 billion.

JUDICIARY -- GONZALEZ RECRUITS FBI PORN SQUAD: Taking his cues from former Attorney General John Ashcroft, Alberto Gonzalez has decided to make the War on Porn "one of the top priorities" of the AG's office. In early August, the FBI's Washington Field Office sent around a job listing to recruit eight federal agents, a supervisor and support staff to take on "manufacturers and purveyors" of pornography. The squad will focus its efforts on those who produce pornography depicting consenting adults. Such porn profiteers include Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., General Motors Corp., Time Warner, and several major hotel chains. The conservative Family Research Council endorsed the move, saying it gave them "a growing sense of confidence in our new attorney general." Some FBI agents were not so pleased. As one anonymous agent put it sarcastically: "I guess this means we've won the war on terror. We must not need any more resources for espionage."

KATRINA -- ALASKA REFUSES TO GIVE UP PORK TO HELP REBUILD GULF COAST: While Sen. John McCain has raised the idea of "charitable pork" -- lawmakers giving up pet projects to help Hurricane Katrina victims -- and Montana is considering giving up the $4 million it received in a federal bill for a downtown parking garage, Alaska Sen. Don Young is proud to remain a "little oinker." Young, chairman of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, has made sure that this year's $295 billion transportation bill is "stuffed like a turkey" with projects for Alaska, including $223 million for a bridge larger than the Brooklyn Bridge and almost as long as the Golden Gate, to connect a town with 8,900 people to a town with 50 people. Another "bridge to nowhere" will cost $200 million, a project which the Anchorage Chamber of Commerce opposes. But in response to calls for giving up these pieces of pork to help efforts for Katrina reconstruction, Young has said, "They can kiss my ear!" and that he has "raised enough money to give back to them voluntarily."

KATRINA - TARNISHED GOLDSTAR GETS BID: First, Halliburton cashed in on Katrina. Now it's the Texas firm GoldStar EM. GoldStar, an ambulance provider company based in Texas, recently faced serious trouble for "billing irregularities and poor ambulance response times." (According to an investigative article by the Houston Press, the company "maximized profits and growth at the expense of the injured.") The FBI raided the GoldStar in April in a Medicaid fraud investigation; the company is currently facing a $1.3 million tax lien from the IRS. That didn't stop the company from landing a lucrative $5.2 million federal contract to rent 50 ambulances to the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The company will make $800 per day in pure profit for each of the 45 ambulances it provides.

HOMELAND SECURITY – NATIONAL GUARD FACES EQUIPMENT SHORTAGES: The top general in the National Guard charges a serious shortage of essential equipment hurt the Guard’s response to Hurricane Katrina. "We were underequipped," stated Lt. Gen. Steven Blum. "We don't need tanks and attack helicopters and artillery, but we must have state-of-the-art radios and communications." Today, "only 34 percent of the Guard's equipment is available for use in the USA…with the worst shortages in trucks, night-vision goggles, engineering equipment and communications gear." That left many Guardsmen patrolling the streets of New Orleans with obsolete, 30-year-old radios left over from the Vietnam War.
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