Texas Homeland Security Director Steve McCraw Pens Idiotic Letter To Noriega

One of Texas Governor Rick Perry’s political appointees is at it again. This time it’s Steve “Quick Draw” McCraw, Perry’s director of Homeland Security.

He sent a scathing letter to State Rep. Rick Noriega (who actually knows something about border security) which the Texas Observer has published (hat tip to Kuff).

There are some serious problems with this letter.
First of all, it looks and smells like intimidation.  Seriously, look at the letter. Are you telling me that Steve McCraw, political hack that he is, doesn’t at least have his own letterhead, given that he has such an “awesome responsibility” within State Government? At the least, you’d think that he’d have some letterhead with his name in the upper left hand corner rather than Rick Perry’s. Why he doesn’t is beyond me, but he’s used that same letterhead before.

Second, the letter is something that the Governor’s Office probably orchestrated on the off chance Noriega does decide to run against John Cornyn in 2008. There are several sentences in the last paragraph on the first page of the letter that would not look good for Noriega in a Cornyn television commercial. They’ll use this letter to try and paint Noriega as a pussified weak-on-homeland-security, mamsy-pamsy, flower-child, hippie-peacenik pawn of Osama bin Laden. Anyone who knows anything about Rick Noriega knows that’s bullshit.

Such. Total. Bullshit.

Then McCraw blathers on and on about how moving his officer under the control of DPS (where, God Forbid! someone actually qualified to hold the post would be in charge) would diminish his office’s ability to coordinate protection and recovery efforts and bla, bla, bla.

Oh yes! Because the Governor’s Office has done such a good job of that. Remember the Katrina emails? And Perry using Katrina as an excuse to rake in money for his own charity, the OneStar Foundation? Perhaps McCraw’s position should be removed do directly beside the governor’s desk and he should be given a big stack of apples to polish.

And, of course, he reminds Rep. Noriega about the number of aliens who have been arrested “along”  the Mexican border from countries with an Al-Qaeda presence.

According to the State Department, 45 countries (at least) have an Al-Qaeda presence, including the United States. Since these people were arrested along the border, there is no evidence provided as to whether they were leaving the U.S. or entering the U.S. And, just because someone comes from a country where Al-Qaeda has operated doesn’t make them a terrorist. That’s a classic example of over-reaction.

Seriously…if Perry’s office took as seriously allegations that kids were being raped at the Texas Youth Commission as it does the fact that people from countries with an Al-Qaeda presence were arrested along the Mexican border, something would have been done about TYC long before it was.

What a sad, sad, sad example of 39 Percent Run Amok by Perry and his political appointees.

Tweet This Post   Ping This Post

Bookmark It