Homeland Security comisar and Civil Rights Violation Czar Janet Napolitano announced that she is resigning today. She leaves behind a large, strong department, fine-tuned to give the public the appearance of security while actually taking away citizens' rights, one checkpoint at a time.
The now-former secretary declined to comment on these accomplishments, but did say the usual boilerplate quitting stuff that's not worth mentioning here. It only seems appropriate at this time of transition to look back on the tenure of America's most intrusive cabinet secretary.
Under Napolitano's steady hand, we've seen the first ever near-rape searches at airports (including threatening legal action to silence the victim, in this case), profiling people with differing political opinions, and policy way ahead of the curve on the spying on American citizens.
From the AP in 2010:
WASHINGTON (AP) — Fighting homegrown terrorism by monitoring Internet communications is a civil liberties trade-off the U.S. government must make to beef up national security, the nation's homeland security chief said(...)
It will be sad to see her go, not because I think her replacement will be better at violating the rights of American citizens, but rather, because her replacement may be better at keeping these violations out the public eye.
See you around the free speech zones, Janet...
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