Peter King disappoints, sides with TSA

Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., incoming chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, has defended the Transportation Security Administration over the body scan and grope. The Hill reported on November 25:

“The fact is, we have an enemy that’s out to kill us,” King said on Fox News. “The fact is, TSA does a very good job, and John Pistole, the head of the TSA, is as dedicated, a counterterrorism fighter I’ve met in all my years in Washington.”

To be sure, the system can be improved, King says. But, “there’s really been a mistake over the last week to 10 days that somehow making TSA the enemy when it’s al Qaida.”

That was last week. This week, King wrote to Attorney General Holder and Secretary of State Clinton calling for WikiLeaks to be formally designated as a foreign terrorist organization. Which is absurd. Wikileaks does not have anything to do with terrorism. It is a website that has published illegally leaked government documents.

So King is all over the place. One minute he’s backing up the dhimmi administration in its determination to humiliate the American people in airports rather than focus its scrutiny on possible terrorists, the next minute he’s going overboard in the other direction and calling for non-terrorists to be officially designated as terrorists.

King says good things from time to time. And he has guts, a rare and welcome commodity in Washington. But I’ve always felt that King, a supporter of the IRA, lacked an intellectual and moral center, and his recent statements prove it.

And if that’s not bad enough, the New York Post’s editors support King’s ridiculous proposal:

Rep. Pete King, incoming chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, has asked both Clinton and Holder to formally designate WikiLeaks as a terrorist organization.

That may sound radical, but in fact such a designation would prohibit US banks, and companies like PayPal, Visa and MasterCard, from processing payments to the group.

It would also make it a felony to provide WikiLeaks with “material support or resources”—subjecting anyone who does so to potential federal prosecution.

Team Obama says it will do everything it can to hold those responsible for this outrage accountable.

Now’s the time to prove it.

Notice the Post’s reasoning. They don’t even try to back up the idea that Wikileaks is, in fact, a terrorist organization. They just point out how useful it would be to designate it as one, as though that were sufficient justification. That’s what passes for rational argument at the Post. a paper that all too frequently substitutes chest thumping for thought.

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Irv P. writes:

Don’t forget with regards to Peter King; he thought it was a bad idea to impeach Bill Clinton. That still sticks in my craw to this day as he is my congressman. He’s been courageous and cowardly. He’s got his alliances that he goes out on a limb to keep. That’s what politicians do.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at December 01, 2010 08:05 AM | Send