Boy oh boy -- can our President pick 'em!Barack Obama selected Erroll Southers to head up Team Obama's Transportation Security Administration -- this despite Southers' being soft-headed on terrorism but also guilty of a shocking misuse of power when he was with the FBI.
Southers has been roundly defended by the White House and key media outlets with the same tired old trio of excuses: 1) those things aren't that unimportant, 2) they happened quite awhile ago, and 3) the charges are only being brought up by Republicans.
But Erroll Southers' muddled ideas on terrorism are of the utmost relevance to his job with the TSA which, among other things, is responsible for the security of our nation's airports.
Southers once explained to an interviewer that America is subject to terrorist attacks because of it's alliances with countries like Israel and France. Indeed, he is shown on this video clip saying that "Some people might argue that U.S. foreign policy exacerbates terrorism" and here, in answer to the question "Which home-grown terrorist groups pose the greatest danger to the U.S.?", Southers answered, "Most of the domestic groups that we have to pay attention to here are white supremacist groups. They are anti-government; in most cases, anti-abortion." (Hat tip: Red State)
But it is the outrageous abuse of his power as a FBI agent that has raised the most ire among many Republicans in Washington. This stems from Southers' gaining illegal access to confidential government criminal records in an attempt to gather private, personal information on his then-estranged wife's new boyfriend. Yipes!
As David Keene of the American Conservative Union says, "To appoint a man head of an agency like TSA which has access to incredible amounts of personal information on individual citizens is simply unacceptable. His appointment would send exactly the wrong signal to those entrusted to handle such information and would inevitably create a culture that tolerates abuse of the rights of those the agency is sworn to protect. Southers has demonstrated a reckless disregard for privacy rights which should disqualify him."
Yes, this incident happened 20 years ago but it is still of the greatest relevance in developing a picture of Erroll Southers' character. And that picture becomes a lot clearer when Southers' recent behavior is figured in; namely, how he gave false information in a sworn affidavit just last October 22 to the Senate Homeland Security Committee about the matter.
After being chased down on some of his claims, Southers changed his story a month later, admitting that the information he gave earlier was incorrect. He had claimed to have asked a San Diego policeman to look at the records and insisted that he himself (Southers) had never accessed the records directly. But when the investigation zoomed in a bit, Southers admitted (a month later) that he had accessed the records himself.
Twice!
But Southers figured he'd pulled a fast one. He came out with this admission the day after the committee had already approved his nomination.
Write your Senators and urge them to vote a firm No on the nomination of Erroll Southers as the Director of the Transportation Security Administration.
