DHS Chief Janet Napolitano Resigns

schwit1 writes with news that the U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, has resigned her post. Napolitano entered the office at the beginning of President Obama's first term, and she was only the third person to hold the position since it was created in response to the September 11th attacks. In a statement, she said the Department of Homeland Security "has improved the safety of travelers; implemented smart steps that make our immigration system more fair and focused while deploying record resources to protect our nation's borders; worked with states to build resiliency and make our nation's emergency and disaster response capabilities more robust; and partnered with the private sector to improve our cybersecurity." Napolitano will be taking over the presidency of the University of California's 10-campus education system. "UC officials believe that her Cabinet experiences –- which include helping to lead responses to hurricanes and tornadoes and overseeing some anti-terrorism measures — will help UC administer its federal energy and nuclear weapons labs and aid its federally funded research in medicine and other areas."

Re:University of Califonia? Oh, they'll love her.

[SJHillman]

The theory is that you get what you pay for. A $150,000 salary might attract someone who can save $5 mil. A $600,000 salary might attract someone better who can save $10 mil. In the end, taxpayers might be better off with a higher paid person if they can bring in the benefits. Professors at research universities operate on a similar principal... they might get paid $250,000 because they bring in $10 million in grants.

Of course, that's the theory.

Good

[PPH]

We need someone to keep an eye on those hippies over at UC Berkeley.

Re:University of Califonia? Oh, they'll love her.

[bill_mcgonigle]

and a cry went up from the dark corners of campus, "woo-hoo, strip-search the co-eds."

Re:University of Califonia? Oh, they'll love her.

[phantomfive]

/s. This is idiotic. Why is a taxpayer supported institution wasting money like she's a CEO?

Why do you get a CEO? Sometimes it's only for the connections. And Janet Napolitano has a lot of connections. The key is this quote:

"will help UC administer its federal energy and nuclear weapons labs and aid its federally funded research in medicine and other areas."

There are groups in the government that want to take those programs away from UC, and privatize them (or whatever). UC wants to keep them because they bring in a lot of money from the federal government. Janet will help with that because of her connections.

Re:University of Califonia? Oh, they'll love her.

[davydagger]

I think the whole math of paying someone more thant $75k/year to attract top talnet starts to go haywire.

A a point you tend to attract people who either cheat, game the system, or have connections, more than skill.

Re:University of Califonia? Oh, they'll love her.

[dgatwood]

And a sizable percentage of UC's supporters would rather see Napolitano in prison than in charge of that institution. Perhaps the regents should have considered what this is going to do to their funding before they chose someone like Napolitano to run their institution.

Re:I speak for all of us when I say

[dgatwood]

Whether they are or not depends entirely on your perspective:

• If your perspective is that the U.S. was legitimately fighting against a corrupt regime that attacked them, then they are war criminals who were jailed for illegal combat.
• If your perspective is that the U.S. illegally invaded a sovereign nation and took its citizens captive, then they are at best militia POWs whose only crime was defending their homeland, whom the U.S. is no longer at war with, which means that the Geneva conventions demand that they be released immediately (and indeed, that many should have been released several years ago). Continuing to hold them past the cessation of primary hostilities makes them political prisoners.

So the question of whether they are or are not political prisoners hinges entirely upon whether the U.S. invasion was a legal action or not. Given that nobody is big enough to force a war crimes trial against the U.S., it is unlikely that the latter question will ever be fully resolved except by default, so there's really no way to say whether they are or are not political prisoners....