As the old sarcastic refrain goes, "Washington's loss is UC's gain". Such is my reaction to the nomination of Janet Napolitano to oversee the University of California system. She showed conclusively she couldn't run the Department of Homeland Security-at least to the the extent of securing our borders and protecting the American people from terrorism. Now she is supposed to administer a monstrous university system overwhelmed by budget problems, a bloated infra-structure and salaries, incompetence, and not to mention a subject I have written about all so often- a wave of anti-Semitism on virtually all of the campuses fueled by various chapters of the Muslim Student Associations, Students for Justice in Palestine, and a slew of radical, leftist professors who hate Israel and the US with equal fervour. (I have been teaching part-time at UC Irvine since 1998 and have been a constant witness.)
The previous UC President, Mark Yudof, proved to be feckless in addressing these issues in my view. Napolitano only promises to be infinitely worse. She is a left-wing ideologue, who toes the liberal, politically-correct line on issue after issue.
One can only shake one's head in wonder at what in her performance as DHS director convinced the suits at UC that she could do this job effectively. Her tenure at DHS was marked by such fiascoes as the Underwear Bomber ("where the system worked perfectly"- the airline passengers swarmed and disarmed the bomber) to targeting right-wing conservatives as terror risks, to Operation Fast and Furious, where presumably to this day, she has yet to speak to Eric Holder about it and ask him why two of her agents are dead-killed by those weapons allowed to walk into Mexico. Border security? Her biggest immigration priority was apparently supporting the Dream Act. In addition, this was the woman who hired one Mohammed Elibiary to become a top DHS adviser and give him access to top-secret computers-which he promptly used to download and disseminate derogatory information against Texas governor Rick Perry. And what was Elibiary's qualification for this position other than co-hosting a convention to salute the accomplishments of the late-Ayatollah Khomeini?
Of course, Napolitano is just another in the long line of Obama officials who have screwed things up monumentally and moved up right up the ladder. Only in government can such incompetence be rewarded.
The problems she will inherit as UC president have been mentioned in paragraph one above. As to the problem of anti-Semitism on UC campuses, I will be watching closely to see how she measures up. I don't have big hopes.
She needs a few more Fousesquawk awards!
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