The deputy press secretary for the Department of Homeland Security was arrested last night on charges that he used the Internet to seduce an undercover Florida sheriff’s detective who he thought was a 14-year-old girl, the Polk County Sheriff’s Office said.

Brian J. Doyle, 55, was arrested at his Silver Spring home at 7:45 p.m. and charged with seven counts of using a computer to seduce a child and 16 counts of transmitting harmful materials to a minor, according to a sheriff’s office statement.

Agents with the department’s Inspector General’s Office, the U.S. Secret Service, the Montgomery County police and the Polk County Sheriff’s Office served a search warrant and seized his home computer and other materials, the statement said.

Doyle was online at the time awaiting what he thought was a nude image of a girl who had lymphoma, Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said in an interview with Fox News’ “On the Record With Greta Van Susteren.” “We wanted to make sure he was using that computer and talking to detectives at the time of the arrest,” Judd said.

In his initial communication last month, Doyle told an undercover computer-crimes detective who he was and that he worked for the Department of Homeland Security, later disclosing numbers for his office phone and government-issued cellphone and using those lines, the sheriff’s office said.

“If he would provide that kind of information to include a photograph of himself with his identification tags, who else may he be talking to around the world who he thinks to be a 14-year-old girl?” Judd said on CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360.”

Attempts to reach Doyle, who was booked into the Montgomery County jail on the Polk County charges, on his office and cellphone numbers and by his official e-mail were unsuccessful.

He was a TSA spokesman before becoming deputy press secretary last year to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff.

Chertoff press secretary Russ Knocke declined to comment on the case beyond releasing a written statement, saying, “We take these allegations very seriously and we will cooperate fully with this ongoing investigation.”

Judd said Doyle confessed and waived extradition to Polk County.

According to the sheriff’s office, Doyle initiated a sexually explicit conversation with the detective on March 12 in response to an Internet profile of a 14-year-old girl.

Doyle allegedly sent pornographic movie clips, non-pornographic photos of himself and instant messages from his AOL account, the police statement said. The sheriff’s office alleged that Doyle “on many occasions” instructed the undercover detective to perform a sexual act while thinking of him and described explicit acts he wished to perform.

Another Homeland Security official — Frank Figueroa, special agent in charge of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Tampa — faces trial this week on charges of exposing himself to a teenage girl last year at a mall. Figueroa, who has been suspended, pleaded not guilty.

I heard once that the real difference between the French and the Americans is that the French refuse to acknowledge race as an issue, while Americans refuse to acknowledge class as an issue.

Think about it. When was the last time someone you know admitted to being anything other than middle class? Even if you knew they were either poor or wealthy, most people would say they were middle class. A few might say they were financially “comfortable” or they were “in between jobs” but very few will admit to being rich or below the poverty line. Yet the number of people living under poverty level is increasing (35 million plus and counting).

From the little debate DeeK and I are having over immigration I am reminded that we have groups of poor people, separated only by race, that are kept fighting amongst each other for small change while the fat cats run off with the bags of cash. Poor whites are afraid of poor blacks getting an equal shot at jobs and education through affirmative action, poor blacks and whites are afraid of immigrants taking their jobs and using up precious resources for their children, and looming large over all of it is the threat of TERRORISTS coming across the border to blow us all up with dirty bombs. But in the end we all want the same thing, to be able to provide for our families and what is keeping us from doing that is not each other.

We can try to force businesses to provide a living wage for everyone, immigrant or citizen, though that has had no success so far. Or, we could go with an idea I first heard attributed to Nixon(I know – what the fuck?) called the mandatory minimum income. The idea is that you make bushiness as competitive as possible by eliminating the minimum wage and you offer everyone a monthly subsidy until their income reaches a certain point. After that point you progressively tax income received form employment or investments. Through this you eliminate social security, welfare, and unemployment (they would get the subsidy instead). Taxes would be substantially higher, but costs of goods and services would go down. And while wages would go extremely low at first, employers would have to increase them enough to entice employees out of the safety net.

It’s an idea that needs a lot of work, but it gives business what it wants (competition without minimum wages) and employees get a stable ground to negotiate from.

This may seem like an unwarranted question, Should We Rebuild New Orleans?–the sentimental response would be, “Yes, of course”. And other objections about people losing their homes and, more importantly, their neighborhood heritage seem obvious, but being the down-to-earth Taurus that I am, prgamatic questions arise.

The cost for rebuilding the levees has already reached $10B. Much of the city needs to be rebuilt from scratch. Who knows the level of toxicity that presently exists? (the government won’t tell us). The wetlands that protected the city from flood were fairly devastasted before Katrina. I doubt they are useful at all now. Much of the city, as we know, was at poverty level before the disaster, and basically served as a low-wage labor source for the tourist industry. Of course, the port served as a critical hub for shipments up the Mississippi, but how many times will companies rebuild their facilities after hurricanes? Add the fact that the city stands about 50 feet below sea level (I am not sure about the exact figure, but I know it is enough to be a major stumbling block). With all of the above, add that climatologists expect Category 4 and 5 hurricanes to be the norm, there are many arguements AGAINST building anew.

So, my dear companions, what are your thoughts? Is New Orleans worth rebuilding? Why or why not?

The Red Queen is down with the flu. Talk amongst yourselves.

Politicians naturally respond to the challenges posed by the easy flow of goods, people and ideas across frontiers by pretending they can resolve these challenges with isolated exercises of political will and legislation. The harsh anti-immigrant laws proposed by the U.S. House of Representatives defy not only common decency and humanity but the very way the global economy works today. The House legislation proves that change is too important to be left to politicians, as do France’s attempts to tinker with the social model that is in deep trouble.

These global connections need to be grasped and articulated to divide more equitably the prosperity that globalization brings for some and the burdens of unemployment or low wages that others experience.

from Jim Hoagland, Washington Post Op-Ed Columnist

Red Queen I read your draft before you published. I will not post until you do. I apologize if I am jumping the gun.

In your post Red Queen you state that: Since the begining our country has evolved by the inclusion of new waves of people. The Germans, Italians and Irish all started as immigrant groups who were feared and loathed upon their arrival, but were eventually included into society and enhanced our culture. We wouldn’t even have labor laws had it not been for Irish immigrants who brought the solutions they couldn’t use in Ireland here where they could be implemented.

This is true, but the nation stood a different condition than it does now. It still contained frontier, which to capitalists meant unexploited resources. Additionally, I have some problems seeing that wave of immigration as heroic. The Europeans came in and filled up space that previously belonged to American-Indians; had not there have been pressure exerted in the form of new resources and new jobs required, the rightful owners of this land could have been in a much better state than they are now. The Euro immigrants also stole livelihood from ex-slaves who certainly could have done the jobs Euros did. Indeed, not only did the incoming population prevent the employment of a class of people who, in part, created the prosperity the westrn world enjoys to this day, but they subjected them to onerous treatment in the form of violence, exclusion and mental anguish that continues through our time. So the diversity you speak of is all strawberries and cream as long as it is not black. Even then we see the U. S. as a waste spigot of European problems poured over another undeserving, but unfortunate population.

You also state: The deal with immigrants has been this- you come to our country, you work the crap jobs, and your children will have a better future. We get cheap labor and a source of tax revenue, they get education for their children and more freedom from persecution and abject (dollar a day) poverty.

The state of immigration is not quite that clear. On MacNiel-Lehrer last night (3/31) a think-tank person raised the fact that a few years ago U. S. doctors complained that too many foriegn doctors were threatening their wages. Consequently, they lobbied Congress and made the entry of these immigrants much more difficult. The same can be said for any high-end labor group. They have and will fight to keep their high wages, and not give a shit about low-end jobs. Hence, their wages are protected and they get the benefit pay low wages in the form of lower prices. If foriegn professionals were allowed the same free entry to our country, we would all pay lower prices in the forms of better infrastucture (lower enginnering costs) and health-care (lower doctor and research fees). Instead the entry comes in the form of low end jobs that brings the pay rates for any jobs close to the minimum wage down.

Also, continuing to allow the rate of immigration into our country still does not address the poor education and persecution people face in their country. And it certainly does not deal with pollution; any nation that persecutes its citizens certainly we do everything it can to skirt any environmental controls in the name of profit. Of course, toxins have no borders; though the local area will be devestated first, pollutants can and will spread into all areas of the globe. If that trend continues those local areas will become too volatile to hold any population and a controlled immigration will turn into a global emergency.

You also speak of carrying capacity and diversity. Yes, we have carrying capacity, but what we produce certainly can be exported to areas that need our goods. If other countries are forced to improve their economies, there will be enough people to afford our exports. Be aware that Mexico does everything to discourage immigrants from Central America, while encouraging emigration of its own citizens. What it does about its own own influx is its business, but when it does nothing to bolster its own carrying capacity at our expense, it becomes ours. Plus, we all know the little attention Mexico pays to the environment. It does so because our policy of exporting work to areas where attention to people’s health is an afterthought, it is pondered at all. So, yes, CONTROLLING immigration is also about protecting ourselves from the poor policies of other nations, a turn in the opposite direction of putting puppet dictators in power who obey Uncle Sam and devastate their people.

Notice that I emphasize control in the last paragraph. Controlling or limiting does not mean ending. Seeing immigration as you do only looks at it from one angle. The way I do sees it from many. It includes control, but also emphasizing creating enough well paying jobs for people already here–immigrants take craps jobs at lower rates than white or blacks are willing to accept; they would take them if they paid better. It also includes pressuring other nations to improve the situation for their own citizens. One of the reasons bin Laden fundamentalism is so popular is the lack of jobs created in oil-producing states. The fundamentalism is a safety-valve the elite encourage to take light off themselves. It would also address immigration on the high-end. As discussed before, if professionals had to worry about their jobs, they certainly would encourage better pay rates in other countries. In this manner, poorer nations would not suffer the brain-drain they do now. Even so, enough people would want to come her that we would not suffer the dearth of diversity you fear.

As you know, I accept all kinds. At the same time I must defend my African brothers and sisters who are the silent members of this debate. The unemployment rate among blacks still remains prohibitively high. Making them accept the jobs only immigrants will take at lower rates seems unfair. Immigrants still have a strong family structure that was destroyed as the result of slavery and Jim Crow laws. By giving blacks few options, we keep them in the treadmill of the justice system that oversees too many of them. Why should my tax money go to immigrants to pay for education they should have received in their own country? Why are not the diverse opinions of my brown brothers as valuable as brown people from somewhere else. Additionally, notice the neighborhoods that most immmigrants are forced to find housing. It is in black ones. This puts further pressure on a community that for much of its history was denied decent housing in favor of, you guessed it, immigrants.

You may opine that my thoughts have a racial component, but I think I have explained the full picture well enough to counter that argument.

As for the Washington Post quote at the top of this blog, Mr. Hoagland may have stated beeter than I have here. I am not for perniciously punishing illegals or completely restricting immigration. I am for seeing the immigration debate in the larger context of issues that affect the entire globe.

The problem I see most frequently (even in your post DeeK) is that the idea that people coming into our country is in itself a bad thing. This is the fundamental flaw in the anti-immigration arguement.

Since the begining our country has evolved by the inclusion of new waves of people. The Germans, Italians and Irish all started as immigrant groups who were feared and loathed upon their arrival, but were eventually included into society and enhanced our culture. We wouldn’t even have labor laws had it not been for Irish immigrants who brought the solutions they couldn’t use in Ireland here where they could be implemented.

The current wave of immigrants are mostly brown people, which causes more antagonistic feelings because they seem so obviously “other” and there is the fear that our society will decline by the inclusion of these people into our culture. Same was said of the Irish.

We have the carrying capacity within this country to support a lot more people than we currenty do (not including oil- whole separate topic). We have the space, the economic ability, and the agricultural capacity to absorb and feed these immigrants. We also need them. One of the reasons that as an industriallized nation we are not seeing the decline in birthrates that England and Germany are is the immigrant population. We need the replacement rate to stay up so that programs like social security have enough workers in the system to support those drawing on it.

The deal with immigrants has been this- you come to our country, you work the crap jobs, and your children will have a better future. We get cheap labor and a source of tax revenue, they get education for their children and more freedom from persecution and abject (dollar a day) poverty. Each new generation improves their condition and increases the amount of taxes that they pay into the sytem. Yes, things should be done in their home country to improve conditions, but there will always be stratification and it is the nature of people to try to improve their situation.

Societies that are closed fail. Closing our borders and stagnating our culture with fundamentalist and eurocentric views will turn a dynamic country into a declining one. (I know there is the arguement that we are already declining- go with me on the positivist view here). Immigration is also a much better solution to population problems- it redistributes population from overpopulated countries whose resources are straining to countries that have the capacity to support those people.