Julie Myers is the head of ICE, and Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security. She is also woefully underqualified — even Michelle Malkin said so. (No doubt the facts that she’s the niece of the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and is married to Michael Chertoff’s chief of staff had nothing to do with her getting the job.) Things got so bad around her nomination that Bush didn’t think he could get her through what was then a Republican-controlled Senate, so he recess appointed her. (That appointment has now expired and she’s been renominated; oddly, it now appears that the ever-spineless Senate Dems are going to confirm her.)
Anyway, here’s the latest hilarity from Assistant Secretary Myers.
A top immigration official has apologized after awarding “most original costume” to a Homeland Security Department employee who dressed in prison stripes, dreadlocks and dark makeup for a Halloween gathering at the agency.
Julie Myers, assistant secretary overseeing Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement division, was part of a three-judge panel that lauded the costume, worn by a white employee, last Wednesday. She also posed for a photo with him.
Myers apologized to employees last Friday in an e-mail, saying some costumes were found to be offensive. On Friday, she called the National Association of African Americans in DHS to inform the group of what had happened, according to a letter sent to association members by the group’s vice president, Sjon Shavers.
“I and the senior management at ICE deeply regret that this happened,” Myers said in her e-mail, which Homeland Security’s public affairs office provided to The Associated Press. “As the head of the agency, I have the responsibility to ensure every employee is a valued member of the ICE team.”
It’s a classy bunch running the show down there, that’s for sure. Maybe this will derail her confirmation.
Via TP.
UPDATE: An alert reader points out the Massachusetts connection in this sorry business: Kelly Nantel is the ICE spokesperson who has been doing damage control over this story, reassuring the public that “it was not immediately apparent that he was wearing the make-up,” and that “It was unintentioned. The employee did not mean to offend although there were some employees that were rightfully offended by it.” Thanks Kelly. Nantel also said that the photograph of ICE Chief Myers with the unnamed employee “has been deleted.” But I bet there’s a copy floating around the internets somewhere.
Anyway, Nantel used to be the spokesperson for our very own Executive Office of Public Safety in the bad old days of Romney/Healey. As such, she played a starring role in one of the 2006 campaign’s more unpleasant episodes. Nantel’s actions during that episode were of dubious legality, as Joan Vennochi explained at the time. As Vennochi said, “[h]ow the Romney-Healey administration handled the information is Nixonian in the way it let politics trump law.” Read Vennochi’s whole column for the nasty details.
Good to see that Nantel has moved on to bigger and better things. Never let it be said that the GOP doesn’t look after its own. You look out for us, we look out for you.
I suspect that there’s more to the confirmation thing than meets the eye. On the surface, we note that the President nominates a series of candidates noted either for the extremeness of their ideology or their service to electoral campaigns. Such people are often unqualified or wrong for the job or both. We look and we think to ourselves, “Democratic Senators should stop them!”
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I think we forget how asymmetric battles are in Congress where Republicans are willing to play hardball in a way no Liebercrat would tolerate from the Democratic side.
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Assume, as is reasonable, that the next President will be named Clinton. When she submits judge appointments, cabinet appointments, bills, budgets, and the like, you can be sure that the Republican minority — if there are still forty of them — will threaten and execute a steady stream of filibusters. They already don’t play fair. They already have shown they can be vindictive. Not letting Bush have what he wants in 2007 could make it even more difficult for Clinton to get what she wants in 2009.
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I suspect that there is some calculus like this going on. It causes too high a bar to be set for preventing Mr N. Competent and Ms Mal Feasance from gaining confirmations.
I fear you’re right. Anyone that has supported a candidate as met the hangers-on, hacks, ne’er-do-wells that slink around the campaign offices ever on the lookout for jobs for themselves and their family. Unable to do real work due to their intellects or personality, they eventually get their politicians to get them jobs as judges, police chiefs, agency heads, diplomats, attorneys.
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Brrrr!
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I’m reminded of a story of President Lincoln. He had the same problem. Office seekers would button-hole him and he would deny them a job in such a way that they were glad to be rejected. Oh, if only that talent existed in politicians today!
Not letting Bush have what he wants in 2007 could make it even more difficult for Clinton to get what she wants in 2009.
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Recess appointments.
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Of course, she would have to get the invertibrate Reid to agree to recess the Senate for a coupld of weeks early in the session in order for her to make the recess appointments.
when you offended people in person.
snark.
I know someone who went to law school w/ Ms. Myers. Apparently she was something of a mediocrity in her class and people were shocked when she turned up as the nation’s immigration boss at a young age. Supposedly she made her political bones as a Ken Starr staffer in the Clinton witchhunt. But you don’t see that on her official resume.
It’s standard procedure for this administration. Look at the calibre of people in high-ranking Justice Department positions. Frankly, with Myers’ mediocre academic performance and superb hackish connections, I’d have been shocked if she didn’t get a top administration job!