Homeland Insecurity, Updated

Today's Debra Maggart* Award for the Dysfunctional Treatment of Children goes to the Bush Administration's Homeland Security Deputy, Brian Doyle, who was arrested yesterday on felony charges for "sexually preying on a detective posing as a 14-year-old girl." As the father of a 14-year-old girl, I am left to angrily wonder how we can feel secure about our borders when we cannot even secure our children from those charged with keeping watch of the Homeland. After 6 years, we're still waiting on George W. Bush to bring integrity back to the White House as he promised he would do in 2000.

04/06/2006, 12:15 p.m. Update: Doyle is not the only Homeland Security official to be charged with illegal activity with minors. According to MSNBC:

As for the other Homeland Security official charged with a sex crime, his name is Frank Figueroa, former head of Operation Predator, the Homeland Security program specifically targeting child sex predators, Mr. Figueroa today pleading no contest that he exposed and fondled himself in front of a teenaged girl in the food court of a mall in Orlando last October.

It's ironic that the very official charged with targeting sex predators is himself a predator; putting wolves in charge of the hen house.

And this all comes on the heels of Congressional hearings on how a 13-year-old got became the victim of on-line pornography, an episode that virtually was ignored by the U. S. Department of Justice, despite their knowledge of it. The Justice Department bends over backwards to defend torture and wire-tapping, but it cannot vigorously pursue and prosecute those who prey on our children. I'd call that getting priorities backwards.


*State Representative Maggart (R-Hendersonville) claims that gays and lesbians should not be allowed to adopt children because they are dysfunctional. My guess is that there are more dysfunctional straight families than gay/lesbian families, so by her logic, straight families should not be allowed to adopt children. Basically, thanks to some bad apples, nobody gets to adopt children.