Chertoff flak has short eyes

Whatever it takes to be a political appointee at the Department of Homeland Security is something your cyberscribe does not want to catch. At the helm, an egocentric incompetent -- at least as a protector of the homeland -- reigns. We know how the administration gutted and screwed FEMA, replacing career emergency professionals with political hacks and contractors, the conditions that led up to the unnecessary loss of life wrought by Hurricane Katrina.

We've known about the budget crunch in the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that saw inspectors unable to fill the tanks of their official vehicles last summer because creditors had cut off the government's gasoline cards. And the rigging of assignments in the Transportation Security Administration and Customs & Border Protect that were designed to purge the personnel roles.

Despite your blogstress's familiarity with these and many, many more of DHS's messes, nothing prepared her for the news coming over the wire this evening that the Assistant Press Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security has been nabbed in an internet child porn sting. AP has broken the story:

MIAMI - The deputy press secretary for the Department of Homeland Security was arrested Tuesday for using the Internet to seduce what he thought was a teenage girl, authorities said.

Brian J. Doyle, 55, of Silver Spring, Md., was arrested on seven charges of use of a computer to seduce a child and 16 counts of transmission of harmful material to a minor. The charges were issued out of Polk County, Fla.

Doyle had a sexually explicit conversation with what he believed was a 14-year-old girl whose profile he saw on the Internet on March 14, the Polk County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement.

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Among the many inexplicable explanations to Mr. Doyle's credit is his statement that the artist previously known as Cat Stevens had been barred from the United States because of “activities that could be potentially linked to terrorism.”

Your cybertrix imagines that there is no Gitmo for middle-aged men who engage in activities that could be potentially linked to the exploitation and psychological destruction of a child. Your ecrivaine would rather take her chances with Cat Stevens than Mr. Doyle.