Sen. Schumer: Dismantle DHS

New York's senior Senator, Charles Schumer thinks that the time is right to break up the Department of Homeland Security:Break up DHS.

Sen. Charles Schumer called yesterday for the Department of Homeland Security's breakup, citing alleged incompetence in a plan to require passports to drive across the Canadian border.

"It's a mess," Schumer said. "There's no focus, it's a conglomerate, and it's too large."

Schumer said he was trying to persuade fellow Democrats to dissolve DHS into smaller agencies but that he was unsure he had the votes to dismantle an agency formed in response to 9/11.

You've got to be kidding me. First Democrats complained that there wasn't a single organizationt oversee national security and then foisted a cobbled together agency that provides union perks and all kinds of nonsense that brought together many formerly disparate agencies under one roof, but has managed to thus far prevent another mass casualty attack.

Now, they want to break it up? How exactly does that jibe with the 9/11 report? Or logic and reasoning.

I wasn't a fan of the creation of DHS in the first place because all it would do is create yet another bureaucracy beholden to its own interests, rather than directly improve national security. Yet, despite the increased bureaucracy, it's managed to prevent another mass casualty attack. So Schumer thinks it should be disbanded and smaller organizations take its place?

Isn't that what got everyone into the mess we're in because each of the agencies weren't talking to each other and sharing information?

As for the rationale Schumer uses - that the DHS is requiring passports to enter/leave the United States, consider the fact that we're simply requiring a proper form of identification. Is it possible that someone could forge passports? Sure, but it is more difficult than obtaining a forged drivers license or other identification, because states have been lax in switching to stronger identification systems. Showing a passport might be inconvenient to those who haven't already obtained a passport, but it is not the kind of burden that Schumer thinks it is.

Of course, he's also pandering to the upstate New York border communities, where people regularly cross the border into Canada to do business or vacation. If the Senator wants to complain about how the DHS has carried out the passport program, that's one thing. But to call for the disbanding of the agency on that basis is asinine.