Untitled Document

27 July 2005

Turning Up the Heat

It was the beginning of a heat wave, a mass of sultry air that oozed across the Blue Ridge and gathered us up in a moist embrace. Moisture condensed on the inside of the windows at Big Pink, and air conditioning was turned up all over the area. The engineers at Pepco Power watched the dials spin up toward red, and issued emergency pleas to shut off unnecessary equipment.

Like the Government, I sighed. It would be easier if we all stayed home.

Monday was one of those steamy days in Washington that saps energy and makes the sweat flow down under the collar, soaking the shirt, and gluing the tie to the inside of the suit jacket. The sodden clothing causes malarial chills to commence moments after entering an air-conditioned room, which is where anyone trapped in town wisely stayed.

Shivering against the heat outside.

The Weather Service is attributing over thirty deaths to the heat wave. The homeless here are camped near the entrances to the big office buildings, waiting for a breath of the manufactured air. I had to step over them on the way out to the Ronald Reagan Building at Federal Triangle. By the time I got to the Metro I thought I was beginning to melt.

It is just barely possible to live in this heat, and legislating in it would seem to be unwise. But onward goes the Democracy.

Senate Democrats are increasing their scrutiny on Judge Roberts, who bears an uncanny resemblance to John Kerry's failed Vice Presidential candidate John Edwards. Both have that hearty southern hothouse look that seems to thrive as the rest of us wilt.

There is a revelation that Judge Roberts apparently wrote something down on paper when he was a minor functionary during the Reagan Administration. The Senate is requesting all the correspondence of the period in order to see if he thought anything at the time while he was writing.

I arrived in Washington during Mr. Reagan's second term to be an even more minor functionary than Judge Roberts. My pedigree was not nearly so grand, but I do not recall any thinking going on at the time. But that could have been just in my building. As I recall, it was hot that summer. I should have written something down about it but I forgot.

The Metro was cool, a hundred feet below the softening asphalt. I glanced at the Express version of the Washington Post. Apparently not all the Congress is focused on Judge Roberts. Secretary Michael Chertoff was summoned to the Hill on Monday and asked to explain his vision for a secure border on the northern and southern flanks of the United States .

I was lucky to have a vision for how my fare card fit into the turnstile in the underground, so I am glad we have smart people shivering in their business suits on the Hill.

Chertoff inherited several disasters from Tom Ridge , who in turn had been handed a hodge-podge of cameras mounted on rickety poles, strung together in a Rube Goldberg network driven by political pork.

The Secretary is in the midst of a major overhaul of the sprawling Department, and Congress is eager to help. The Presidential Succession Act of 1792, as amended, was recently changed to elevate to eighth from eighteenth in the succession to the Oval Office. Mike Chertoff is now right after the Attorney General. The old succession list had been based on seniority of Departments in the cabinet, and thus Secretary Chertoff replaces Gail Norton of Interior, the Secretary I consider the most fair of them all.

The new ranking might make us more secure, if the Vice President, Speaker of the House, President Pro Tem of the Senate, Secretaries of State, Treasury and Defense and the Attorney General are out of town.

The Secretary turned those sharp hooded eyes on the lawmakers and told them he was going to overhaul the America 's Shield Initiative, which is an attempt to bring together a disparate network of sensors, cameras, communication and analytic technology along the southern and northern U.S. borders.

He declined to give details, as did Mr. Nixon about his secret plan to end the Vietnam War. But he said that the revamped program would compliment the increased number of Border Patrol Agents mandated by the Congress, and would present an effective and pleasing programmatic aspect.

The Senate had previously taken the Department to task for its inability to staunch the flow of illegals across the borders. We naturally think of the flood that comes north each night across the little trickle of the Rio Grande . But there is a similar gash in the northern frontier, well exploited by high-tech smugglers of BC Bud, the high-grade marijuana from British Columbia .

If drugs can come, think what else might.

Congress wants the Department to use more off-the-shelf wireless technology to fix things. The old program was started in 1998, and it had been called the “Integrated Surveillance Intelligence System.” They spent $239 million to prove it didn't work.

The system was plagued by shoddy wiring and poor installations. The General Services Administration was called in to investigate the disaster. The resulting report focused on the employment of the daughter of Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-Tex.) by the prime contractor. Reyes had been a former Border Patrol official and key backer of the system of 12,000 sensors and several hundred cameras.

The report hastened to state that there was no overt indication of impropriety by any elected official. The whole thing was just a series of unfortunate events. Which is one of the things the Congressmen asked Secretary Chertoff about.

We are that point in the year in which the House and Senate have passed dissimilar bills to fund the Department of Homeland Security for fiscal 2006. There is around fifty million bucks for ASI in both bills, which would be enough to purchase the landing gear and an engine for the Air Force's F-22 fighter jet.

The fact that the amount of money is completely inadequate to the task is not relevant to the process. Other Committees will decide how many fighters the Air Force needs. The Homeland Security Committees will sort out how much protection the borders need.

Maybe they can have the Air Force fly over them once in a while.

On the upside, the whole ASI program is forecast to cost two and a half billion dollars over the next five years. It will do all manner of wonderful things if it is ever completed. It will detect illegals crossing remote areas of the border, deter intrusions, and create a data base that can be shared with the intelligence agencies.

It will slice and dice and cook dinner on the way home from the office, according to plans, just like the Popeil Pocket Fisherman as seen on TV.

Well, at least it will if anyone turns up the heat on the Secretary.

Since we are talking about the budget for next year, and ASI can't possibly be completed until 2011 at the earliest, I hope the terrorists don't have any near-term travel plans.

I think they would be crazy to come here. It is just too damn hot.