Elevated Risk blog scrutinizes Homeland Security Department

Tulsans will remember G. W. Schulz as an excellent investigative reporter who wrote for Urban Tulsa Weekly a few years ago. He left UTW to go back to the San Francisco Bay Area where he now works for the Center for Investigative Reporting. CIR is launching Elevated Risk, a new blog devoted to shining a spotlight on the U. S. Department of Homeland Security. In the introductory post, Schulz asks some good, hard questions of DHS:

It's time, for example, to ask: Why did a Terrorist Screening Center, thousands of additional airport security officers, behavior detection specialists, ambitious technology investments and multiple intelligence-gathering operations not stop a young radical from nearly killing 290 people on Christmas Day in 2009?

Why are state and federal authorities still struggling to respond to natural disasters after the federal government handed out more than $30 billion in preparedness grants?

What happened to the high-tech surveillance system that was supposed to guard the country's southern border? The Obama Administration embraced the plan to line the border with fences, remote sensors and surveillance cameras at a cost of hundreds of millions. Then, just weeks ago, the administration showed signs that it was bailing out.

The litany of department missteps is an embarrassment.

- The $9 million spent on ice that FEMA allowed to melt on a Texas airfield.
- The $110 million in spending on conferences over a three-year stretch.
- The tens of millions spent on technology that sits unused in warehouses across the country.
- The inability to install a leader at the head of the Transportation Security Administration.

And it's time to ask if Americans are giving away too many freedoms central to their identities as U.S. citizens in exchange for costly and intrusive security programs that may not protect them.

Keep your eyes on Elevated Risk for answers.