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     More on Bush's pick for new Fatherland Security Director (because Secretary of Defense isn't a job about the national security, and neither is the National Security Advisor), is Michael Chertoff!  Is Chertoff the new head of DHS, or is he simply the nominee, don't ask the Mainly Stupid Media.  Here is a cache of the google "cluster" of pages on Chertoff, i.e. the link that looks like "» all # related."

     Ever eager to please Bu$hCo, the MSM headlines scream that, in fact, Chertoff is the new head of DHS.  Most strangely, perhaps, only Voice of America, which has a reputation as propaganda, and the WhiteHouse website themselves get it right.  <me shakes="head" />

     Now, who is Judge Chertoff?  Well, you can be damn sure if the terrorists ever get into any land deals involved any failed Savings & Loans, Chertoff is going to get them.  Since 1980, when Chertoff was admitted to the bar, he spent twenty years either in the US Attorney's office or, from 1994-1996, as Chief Counsel for the Whitewater Committee!  Here is Joe Conason writing about Whitewater, blowing away one of Chertoff's stupider conspiracy theories concering monies to Web Hubbell.  Yes, land deals in Arkansas are not a wise move for the prospective terrorist with Chertoff on the case.

     In addition to his private practices, in the last twenty years Chertoff has also been a lawyer in the US Attorney's offices of New Jersey and Manhattan (S. District of NY).  He was appointed, during 2001, to serve as Asst. Attorney General, Criminal Division of the Department of Justice, since then.

     This (pdf|html) is an Alliance for Justice peace on Chertoff, which says the press has said that

Chertoff supervised the prosecution of Zacarias Moussaoui and has been described as "the driving force behind the Justice Department's most controversial initiatives in the war on terrorism." Civil liberties advocates blame him for what they see as dangerous curtailments to free speech and the rights of criminal defendants. According to press reports, Chertoff has played a key role in several matters: first, the increase in FBI agents' authority to conduct domestic surveillance; second, the use of "material witness" warrants to lock up people of Middle Eastern dissent; third, the interviewing of thousands of Middle Eastern men who entered the United States before and after the 9/11 attacks[.] ... [H]e has also been the first to defend controversial Justice Department policies. He spoke up for the government's right to hold suspects indefinitely without counsel as "enemy combatants," as well as the government's decision to interview 5,000 Arab Americans after the 9/11 attacks.

     One distinctly nice thing that can be said in favor of Chertoff as a human and lawyer, even if it is not particularly meaningful from the "qualifications for Sec of DHS" standpoint, is his pro bono work on the New Jersey racial profiling cases.

     And although I've been given some indication that the Guiliani prosecution of organized crime figures wasn't all it was cracked up to be, Chertoff took a part in that, too.  Again, from the Alliance for Justice report...

He has a record of accomplishment on organized crime going back to 1985 when he prosecuted the members of several major Mafia families under Rudolph Giuliani, then the U.S. attorney in New York. Chertoff helped to lead a wave of prosecutions against mob bosses in the Lucchese, Persico and Genovese families. Chertoff consolidated the cases, claiming the crimes were connected in what he called "the commission of La Cosa Nostra." All eight defendants in the case were convicted in a ten-week racketeering trial. 1 7 The case was hailed as "a blow to the mafia"

     And more...  Did you realize he was the prosecutor for Enron?  Lucky Ken Lay!  Here is a Muslim American Society report on Chertoff, which is none too flattering, and makes for well researched reporting.