What qualifications do you need to run DHS?

[Jeffersons Ghost]

Is Janet Napolitano qualified?

Janet Napolitano
Wednesday February 3, 2010
Janet Napolitano, a former governor of Arizona, is the homeland security secretary in the Obama administration.

Ms. Napolitano was criticized when she portrayed a thwarted bombing of a Detroit-bound airline on Christmas Day, 2009, as a test that the air safety system passed. Counterterrorism experts and members of Congress were hardly willing to praise what they said was a security system that had proved to be not nimble enough to respond to the ever-creative techniques devised by would-be terrorists.

On Dec. 28, Ms. Napolitano said that the thwarted bombing represented a failure of the nation's aviation security system, not the success she and other administration officials had first claimed. She said that her initial remark -- "the system has worked really very, very smoothly over the course of the past several days" -- had been taken out of context. "Our system did not work in this instance," she said. "No one is happy or satisfied with that. An extensive review is under way."

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/n/janet_napolitano/index.html

I might apply for her job, as many of you know, I can make stupid remarks even better than Janet Napolitano.

[babylonsister]

1. Can you top this? I highly doubt it...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janet_Napolitano

She graduated from Santa Clara University in Santa Clara, California, where she won a Truman Scholarship, and was valedictorian. She then received her Juris Doctor (J.D.) from the University of Virginia School of Law. After law school she served as a law clerk for Judge Mary M. Schroeder of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and then joined Schroeder's former firm, the Phoenix law firm Lewis and Roca.<4>
Political career

In 1991, while a partner with the private Phoenix law firm Lewis and Roca LLP, Napolitano served as an attorney for Anita Hill.<4><5> Anita Hill testified in the U.S. Senate that then U.S. Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas had sexually harassed her ten years earlier when she was his subordinate at the federal EEOC.<6>

In 1993, Napolitano was appointed by President Bill Clinton as United States Attorney for the District of Arizona.<4> As U.S. Attorney, she was involved in the investigation of Michael Fortier of Kingman, Arizona, in connection to the Oklahoma City bombing. She ran for and won the position of Arizona Attorney General in 1998. Her tenure focused on consumer protection issues and improving general law enforcement.

While still serving as attorney general, she spoke at the 2000 Democratic National Convention just three weeks after having a mastectomy. Napolitano recalls that the pain was so unbearable that she couldn't stand up. "Work and family helped me focus on other things while I battled the cancer," says Napolitano. "I am very grateful for all the support I had from family, friends and Arizonans." <7>
Governor

She narrowly won the Arizona gubernatorial election of 2002 with 46 percent of the vote, succeeding Republican Jane Dee Hull and defeating her Republican opponent, former congressman Matt Salmon, who received 45 percent of the vote. She was Arizona's third female governor and the first woman in the United States to be elected governor to succeed another elected female governor.<8> She spoke at the 2004 Democratic Convention<9> after some initially considered her to be a possible running mate for presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry in the 2004 presidential election but Kerry selected Sen. John Edwards instead. In November 2005, Time magazine named her one of the five best governors in the U.S.<10>
Napolitano speaks during the second day of the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver, Colorado.

As Governor, Napolitano set records for total number of vetoes issued. In 2005, she set a single session record of 58 vetoes, breaking Jane Dee Hull's 2001 record of 28.<11><12> This was followed in June 2006, less than four years into her term, when she issued her 115th veto and set the all-time record for vetoes by an Arizona governor. The previous record of 114 vetoes was set by Bruce Babbitt during his nine years in office.<12><13> By the time she left office, the governor had issued 180 vetoes.<14>

In November 2006, Napolitano won the gubernatorial election of 2006, defeating the Republican challenger, Len Munsil, by a nearly 2–1 ratio and becoming the first woman to be re-elected to that office. Arizona's constitution provides a two-consecutive-term term limit for its governors<15>, meaning Napolitano would have been barred from seeking a third term in office in 2010.

In January 2006, she won the Woodrow Wilson Award for Public Service. She was a member of the Democratic Governors Association Executive Committee. Furthermore, she has also served previously as Chair of the Western Governors Association, and the National Governors Association. She served as NGA Chair from 2006 to 2007,<16> and was the first female governor and first governor of Arizona ever to serve in that position.

[Jeffersons Ghost]

2. not quite but I DID prove I can make stupid remarks. Thanks for the info....

I now have more respect for her. When I read she was simply a "governor of Arizona" I wasn't impressed with a simple politician holding such a sensitive position.

[babylonsister]

3. You are very welcome. nt