{"id":217381,"date":"2010-01-20T13:40:09","date_gmt":"2010-01-20T18:40:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.campaignforliberty.com\/blog.php?view=31610"},"modified":"2010-01-20T13:40:09","modified_gmt":"2010-01-20T18:40:09","slug":"tsa-nominee-resigns-amid-controversy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/217381","title":{"rendered":"TSA Nominee Resigns Amid Controversy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>By Matt Hawes<\/p>\n<p>Erroll Southers, President Obama&#8217;s choice to lead the Transportation Security Administration, withdrew from consideration for the position earlier today.&nbsp; Southers faced criticism from senators and was also weighed down by information that he may have misled Congress concerning his use of a government database to dig up personal information.<\/p>\n<p>From the <em>Washington Post<\/em>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2009\/11\/10\/AR2009111017808.html\" >As The Eye first reported in November<\/a>, Southers told senators that he asked a co-worker&#8217;s husband who worked for the San Diego Police Department at the time to run a background check on his ex-wife&#8217;s boyfriend.<\/p>\n<p>The incident did little to stop his confirmation by the <a href=\"http:\/\/hsgac.senate.gov\/public\/\" >Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee<\/a>. But a day after the panel referred his nomination to the Senate, Southers <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2009\/12\/31\/AR2009123102257.html\" >told lawmakers<\/a> that he himself had twice conducted the database searches, downloaded confidential law enforcement records and then passed the information on to the police department employee&#8230;.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/voices.washingtonpost.com\/federal-eye\/2010\/01\/tsa_nominee_erroll_southers_wi.html\" >Read the rest.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Senate opposition was led by Senator Jim DeMint, who not only opposed Southers&#8217; plans for TSA, but was pressing for more information about the database incident.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s no surprise, however, that many lawmakers have taken the opportunity to praise Southers and express their disappointment that he has withdrawn his name.&nbsp; After all, violating civil liberties and abusing your authority to dig up personal information is a central tenet of the government&#8217;s approach to security.&nbsp; A questionable history would only add to his qualifications.<\/p>\n<p>Since the nomination is currently vacant, I&#8217;d like to officially take this opportunity to plug my support for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.campaignforliberty.com\/blog.php?view=14907\">Steve Bierfeldt<\/a> to head up the TSA.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Update: <\/strong>Thanks to Matt Holdridge for designing this &#8220;Steve Bierfeldt for TSA Chief 2010&#8221; poster!&nbsp; Now we just need a good campaign slogan&#8230; Freedom Takes to the Skies?<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.campaignforliberty.com\/img\/Steve-TSA.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Matt Hawes Erroll Southers, President Obama&#8217;s choice to lead the Transportation Security Administration, withdrew from consideration for the position earlier today.&nbsp; Southers faced criticism from senators and was also weighed down by information that he may have misled Congress concerning his use of a government database to dig up personal information. From the Washington [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3999,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-217381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3999"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=217381"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217381\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=217381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=217381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=217381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}