Why Ray Kelly as Head of DHS is a Real Bad Idea

By Davis Sirota

If you thought Big Brother couldn’t possibly get bigger, and if you thought this Dr. Strangelove era couldn’t possibly get any Strangelovier, welcome to the debate over the next head of the Department of Homeland Security.

In the midst of disclosures about the Obama administration’s sprawling — and likely illegal — national security state, the news today is that current Secretary Janet Napolitano is stepping down and that senior Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer is pushing New York City police commissioner Ray Kelly to fill the position. And predictably, from their green room couches,elite media blowhards are already frantically cheering on a potential Kelly nomination.

Lost in the noise is the fact that in the midst of disclosures about the Obama administration’s sprawling — and potentially illegal — national security state, a Kelly nomination would put a national surveillance apparatus fit for a sci-fi satire in the hands of a comic-book-worthy thug.

Five parts of the police commissioner’s record paint a picture of Kelly that seems almost too cartoonish to be accurate. But, alas, it is Kelly’s undisputed record:

1. Kelly is the man behind New York City’s brutish stop-and-frisk program. According to New York state legislators, Kelly defends the program’s disproportionate targeting of people of color by insisting that it is specifically designed to “instill fear in them.” Read much more on the practice here.

2. Kelly has helped oversee a collusion between law enforcement and tech companies for the creation of an unparalleled surveillance regime in New York City. As CNN reported, the “crime monitoring system — developed with Microsoft — designed to allow law enforcement to better collect data and review the city in real time, using a collection of cameras, license-plate readers and other resources.

3. Kelly forged an unprecedented — and possibly illegal — program allowing the Central Intelligence Agency to embed itself in the NYPD for the purpose of domestic surveillance. Despite the CIA being statutorily barred from conducting surveillance inside the United States,Kelly has loyally defended the program.

Read the rest here.

The face of a Progressive Liberal on Steroids.The worst kind of Tyrant..