Nick Sorrentino suggests something that should have been done, oh, 12 years ago before the idea came up:

Let’s start with the name. Department of Homeland Security. I weirded me out when I heard GW refer to the USA as “the homeland” over a decade ago. It still does. We don’t live in Germany. The term is very continental and evokes unfortunate images. America is the “home of the brave,” but it’s not the “homeland of the brave.”

OK maybe the homeland thing is just me, but let’s abolish it for trampling on the Constitution, for all the illegal searches and seizures, having to take off our shoes and belts at the airport, and the facilitation of military weaponry and tactics to our police departments. For starters.

The crony capitalism surrounding the beast is yet another reason make it disappear. For years local politicians around the Beltway fought about where Department of Homeland Security building was going to be. Maryland, DC, and Virginia grappled viciously for the right to all that government pork. DC “won” in the end even though the site didn’t have enough parking for the thousands of new government employees. Not to worry, they made space – at the cost of millions to the taxpayer. That is on top of the $3.9 billion already allocated for the project which is the largest government construction project since the Pentagon. …

From the very beginning DHS has done wrong by the American people. It’s a vehicle for government waste supercops. Our rights as citizens have been diminished for its existence and I for one would love to see it wither away.

Bloomberg BusinessWeek has a few more things to say:

In 2002 the George W. Bush administration presented a budget request for massively increased spending on homeland security, at that point coordinated out of the Office of Homeland Security. “A new wave of terrorism, involving new weapons, looms in America’s future,” the White House said. “It is a challenge unlike any ever faced by our nation.” In proposing a new cabinet-level agency, Bush said, “The changing nature of the threats facing America requires a new government structure to protect against invisible enemies that can strike with a wide variety of weapons.” Because of “experience gained since Sept. 11 and new information we have learned about our enemies while fighting a war,” the president concluded that “our nation needs a more unified homeland security structure.”

More than a decade later, it’s increasingly clear that the danger to Americans posed by terrorism remains smaller than that of myriad other threats, from infectious disease to gun violence to drunk driving. Even in 2001, considerably more Americans died of drowning than from terror attacks. Since then, the odds of an American being killed in a terrorist attack in the U.S. or abroad have been about one in 20 million. The Boston marathon bombing was evil and tragic, but it’s worth comparing the three deaths in that attack to a list of the number of people in the U.S. killed by guns since the December 2012 massacre in Newtown, Conn., which stood at 6,078 as of June.

This low risk isn’t evidence that homeland security spending has worked: It’s evidence that the terror threat was never as great as we thought. A rather pathetic Heritage Foundation list of 50 terrorist plots against the U.S. foiled since Sept. 11 includes such incidents as a plan to use a blowtorch to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge and “allegedly lying about attending a terrorist training center”—but nothing involving weapons of mass destruction. Further, these are alleged plots. The list of plausible plots, let alone actual crimes, is considerably smaller. From 2005 to 2010, federal attorneys declined (PDF) to bring any charges against 67 percent of alleged terrorism-related cases referred to them from law enforcement agencies.

That hasn’t stopped a bonanza of spending. Homeland security agencies got about $20 billion in the 2002 budget. That rose to about $60 billion (PDF) this year. Given that spending is motivated by such an elusive threat, it’s no surprise a lot is wasted. The grants made by DHS to states and cities to improve preparedness are notorious for being distributed with little attention to either risk or effectiveness. As an example, economist Veronique de Rugy has highlighted the $557,400 given to North Pole, Alaska, (population 1,570), for homeland security rescue and communications equipment. “If power companies invested in infrastructure the way DHS and Congress fight terrorism, a New Yorker wouldn’t be able to run a hair dryer, but everyone in Bozeman, Mont., could light up a stadium,” de Rugy complained. …

The problem with DHS is bigger than a bloated budget misspent. An overweight DHS gets a free pass to infringe civil liberties without a shred of economic justification. John Mueller, a political science professor at Ohio State University, notes that the agency has routinely refused to carry out cost-benefit analyses on expensive and burdensome new procedures, including scanning every inbound shipping container or installing full-body scanners in airports—despite being specifically asked to do so by the GAO. Again, it’s unsurprising that the result of a free hand in enforcement has been excessive and counterproductive security measures, as I’ve argued before: like TSA agents taking away a GI Joe doll’s four-inch plastic gun because it was “a replica,” and deterring so many passengers from airline travel that more than 100 people have died on the roads because they substituted a dangerous means of transportation (driving) for a safe one (flying). …

Beyond the waste of money and the overregulation, the expansion of the homeland security state has created unnecessary fear among a population that should be able to trust its government to send accurate signals about risk. So let’s start sending the right signals. Shut down the DHS, and redistribute the agencies under its umbrella back to other departments, including the justice, transportation, and energy departments. Then start bringing their budgets into some sort of alignment with the benefit they provide.

Treating the terror threat with the contempt it deserves would be good for the deficit and the economy, and a relief for anyone who travels.

Michael Goodwin asks:

Can the United States survive the remaining 3 1/2 years of the Obama presidency? That was the question I asked a well-known veteran of Washington politics and national-security issues. Though a Democrat, he is trusted and respected by both parties for his many years of advice and troubleshooting service to the nation.

I asked the question because our long conversation reflected shared worries about the rise of Islamic fundamentalism and America’s retreat. We discussed the disasters of Syria, Benghazi and Obama’s strange support for the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohammed Morsi in Egypt. We agreed the odds were growing that Iran would get a nuclear weapon and feared what it would mean for Israel and our Arab allies.

We expressed shock at the lasting damage done to our intelligence agencies by Edward Snowden, the sloppy background check that enabled him to get security clearance in the first place and the Keystone Kops effort to capture him. We winced that our nation’s reputation was an international punch line as Russia and China mocked our president.

Given that context, my question of whether America can survive Obama was not just a figure of speech or an exaggerated musing. I meant it literally.

My friend understood my meaning.

“I don’t know,” he said. When I pressed him, he reviewed the scope of the global disorder we had just discussed, and repeated his answer. “I don’t know,” he said a second time. …

Maybe we will be fine. But the sense that the walls are closing in on us and that we are showing weakness to an emboldened, hostile world fills me with dread. I have a growing fear we are on the verge of a catastrophe.

“Verge of a catastrophe” sounds like cockeyed optimism. But Frank DeMartini argues against Goodwin’s gloom:

This comment probably would have left me a little nervous too had I not been in my 50s now.  You see, I lived through the 60s, Vietnam, Watergate and Jimmy Carter.  I’ve heard many times that the United States was going down for the count.  In fact, it was something that the news quoted quite often in my childhood.  Let’s be honest, we almost came to a Revolution over Vietnam and we almost became a second rate country under Jimmy Carter who by the way is still the worst President we’ve had in my lifetime.  Obama is not even close.  At least, Obama with all of his negatives seems to understand defense (a little).

I’ve lived through the early Reagan years when we were being told on an almost daily basis that Japan and Germany were going to overtake us.  Well, we all know the didn’t.  In fact, that conversation has completely stopped.  Now, we’re afraid of China in the same way.  This, of course, is the same China that cannot afford to feed most of its occupants. …

In 1980, when Jimmy Carter was running for re-election, we had the worst stagflation anyone could remember.  Inflation was in Double Digits and Interest rates were at an all time high.  The phrase misery index was coined for the first time to describe how bad things were.  Borrowing was even harder than it is now because of the huge interest rates.  Savings were good if you have any money to save because you could actually get 20% on a regular bank CD.

From a foreign affairs standpoint, we were a joke.  It started with Afghanistan.  Carter decided to boycott the Russian Olympics as a result.  Russia didn’t care, they just ignored the then occupier of the White House.  Pathetic foreign policy continued with the Iran Hostage Crisis which made Ted Koppel a star.  In fact, even Carter’s attempt at a military mission to rescue the hostages proved to be a disaster.  Our helicopters didn’t even make it to hostile airspace and they went down.

So, don’t tell me that America cannot survive another three years of the Obama Administration.  I’m not worried.  I am worried about the short term effects of his policies, but I’m not worried about anything much else.  We will survive.  We always do.

Daniel Henninger splits the difference due to a recent event:

Mark July 3, 2013, as the day Big Government finally imploded.

July 3 was the quiet afternoon that a deputy assistant Treasury secretary for tax policy announced in a blog post that the Affordable Care Act’s employer mandate would be delayed one year. Something about the “complexity of the requirements.” The Fourth’s fireworks couldn’t hold a candle to the sound of the U.S. government finally hitting the wall.

Since at least 1789, America’s conservatives and liberals have argued about the proper role of government. Home library shelves across the land splinter and creak beneath the weight of books arguing the case for individual liberty or for government-led social justice. World Wrestling smackdowns are nothing compared with Hayek vs. Rawls.

Maybe we have been listening to the wrong experts. Philosophers and pundits aren’t going to tell us anything new about government. The one-year rollover of ObamaCare because of its “complexity” suggests it’s time to call in the physicists, the people who study black holes and death stars. That’s what the federal government looks like after expanding ever outward for the past 224 years.

Even if you are a liberal and support the goals of the Affordable Care Act, there has to be an emerging sense that maybe the law’s theorists missed a signal from life outside the castle walls. While they troweled brick after brick into a 2,000-page law, the rest of the world was reshaping itself into smaller, more nimble units whose defining metaphor is the 140-character Twitter message. …

On July 5, the administration announced into the holiday void that because of “operational barriers” to IRS oversight, individuals would be allowed to self-report their income to qualify for the law’s subsidies.

If the ObamaCare meltdown were a one-off, the system could dismiss it as a legislative misfire and move on, as always. But ObamaCare’s problems are not unique. Important parts of the federal government are breaking down almost simultaneously.

The National Security Agency has conservative philosophers upset that its surveillance program is ushering in Big Brother. What’s more concretely frightening is that a dweeb like Edward Snowden could download the content of the NSA’s computers onto a thumb drive and walk out of the world’s “most secretive” agency. Here’s the short answer: The NSA has 40,000 employees. (Some say it’s as high as 55,000, but it’s a secret.)

Echoing that, when the IRS’s audits of conservative groups emerged, the agency managers’ defense was that the IRS is too big for anyone to know what its agents are doing. Thus both the NSA and IRS are too big to avoid endangering the public.

It is hard to imagine a more apolitical federal function than the nation’s weather satellites. The ones we have—to predict hurricanes and such—are about to wear out and need to be replaced. Can’t do it. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NASA and the Pentagon have been trying to replace the old weather satellites, since 1994. The Government Accountability Office says “we are looking at potentially a 17-month gap” in this crucial weather data. NOAA has good scientists whose bad luck is they work for a collapsing constellation of bureaucracies.

The State Department missed signs of the Arab Spring’s insurrections in late 2010 despite warnings from outside groups. Egypt is in flames, in part, because State for years has been mainly a massive, drifting bureaucracy. Little wonder Hillary Clinton spent four years in flight from the place. …

To call the U.S. federal government a black hole is a disservice to black holes, which have a neutral majesty. Excepting the military’s fighting units, the federal government has become a giant slug, like Jabba the Hutt, inert but dangerous. Like Jabba, the government increasingly survives by issuing authoritarian decrees from this or that agency. Barack Obama, essentially a publicist for Jabba’s world of federal fat, euphemized this mess Monday as the American people’s “democracy.”

Thomas Jefferson, who must be rolling in his grave, said the way to ensure good government was to divide it among the many. Some states and cities are indeed reworking their functions in efficient, innovative ways. But Washington is oblivious to life beyond the Beltway.

Those indispensable but dying weather satellites are a metaphor for the U.S. now. Whether ObamaCare or the border fence, Washington is winding down into a black hole of its own making. The debate’s over. Liberalism will be swept into this vortex, too.

The Illinois General Assembly Monday overruled Gov. Pat Quinn’s veto and approved the state’s new concealed-carry law.

Illinois passed its law two years after Wisconsin became the 49th state to legalize concealed-carry, and on the same day as a deadline from a federal judge that said that banning concealed-carry is unconstitutional. The Chicago Tribune reports:

While gun owners may have questions about how soon they’ll be able to carry guns in public, other state residents may also have questions about where they can expect to find people armed with deadly weapons.

The Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto has an answer for those “other state residents”:

That’s an easy one to answer: You can expect to find people armed with deadly weapons in just about any dodgy Chicago neighborhood.

Taranto’s proof comes from the Associated Press …

Some lawmakers feared failure to pass something [and thereby triggering the Seventh Circuit’s injunction] would mean virtually unregulated weapons in Chicago, which has endured severe gun violence in recent months — including more than 70 shootings, at least 12 of them fatal, during the Independence Day weekend.

… to which Taranto replies:

Wait, how could Chicago have all those shootings when it’s illegal to carry a gun? Don’t street criminals have any respect for the law? Oh wait, of course they don’t — which is why Chicago already had “virtually unregulated weapons.” The new law will allow honest citizens, those who do comply with regulations, to defend themselves.

In fact, the ban on concealed-carry has worked so well specifically in Chicago that, according to KMOV-TV in St. Louis …

Gun violence in Chicago is so severe that a state lawmaker wants state police and the National Guard to assist the local cops.

State Rep. Monique Davis (D-Chicago) is making the request.

“I am requesting with this press conference that Gov. Patrick Quinn order the Illinois National Guard (and) the Illinois State Police (to) come to Chicago and work with our mayor Ron (sic) Emanuel to provide safety for the children, especially,” she said at a news conference in Springfield.

You may recall there were predictions that Wisconsin would become the Wild West with passage of concealed-carry. You may have noticed that is not the case.

More Tribune reporting may seem familiar too:

Reaction from law enforcement has been mixed.

Several Chicago police officers who work in high-crime neighborhoods said they support the law, in part because law-abiding citizens who live in dangerous neighborhoods may have a better chance to defend themselves. The officers, who spoke on the condition that they not be identified, agreed that there would be a learning curve for police officers encountering people permitted to be armed.

“I think it’ll be a little bit of a rough start in the beginning,” said one officer who works in a South Side district. “I’m happy for the average citizen who is not up to no good.”

That attitude is not in step with the Chicago Police Department’s top brass. Superintendent Garry McCarthy and Mayor Rahm Emanuel have opposed concealed carry, saying that more people carrying guns is the last thing that’s needed in Chicago, home to some of the most violent neighborhoods in the country.

Big-city police chiefs apparently are not the protectors of your constitutional rights. Then again, “some of the most violent neighborhoods in the country” have been that way during Illinois’ concealed-carry-free era. As Taranto pointed out, criminals don’t respect laws, including gun laws.