Well, it looks like there may well be trouble in paradise. If you define “paradise” as being the Department of Homeland Security, that is.<\/p>\n
There may well be substance to recent allegations of a female “frat-house” environment and\/or nepotism at the highest echelons of DHS. Additional witnesses apparently have come forward implicating Suzanne Barr, chief of staff for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, in having engaged in “lewd behavior”<\/a>.<\/p>\n Yeah, I know boys will be boys and girls will be girls and all that.\u00a0 And I generally don’t really give the proverbial rat’s ass what consenting adults do in private on their own time, provided they don’t ask me to approve or somehow financially subsidize their shenanigans.<\/p>\n But I do care about fair and equal treatment under the law.\u00a0 Here we seem to have indications of possible serious wrongdoing by very senior people at DHS – wrongdoing that was both unlawful and blatantly discriminatory.\u00a0 There are now two different lawsuits accusing multiple senior DHS officials as having engaged in discriminatory practices and\/or lewd behavior to an extent which arguably constitutes a hostile workplace. And reportedly there are other witnesses to similar misconduct who have not yet been deposed.<\/p>\n I think I’m seeing smoke.\u00a0 And I remember an old saying that starts off something like, “Where there’s smoke . . . .”<\/p>\n This also makes me wonder about a couple of other things. First: will our “liberal brethren” who’ve been campaigning for years for gender equality call for the wholesale firing of implicated DHS senior leadership – or will they ignore the whole matter or argue for leniency? I think we already know the answer if those accused here were male.\u00a0 But they’re not.<\/p>\n And second: will DoJ actually conduct a real investigation of these allegations to determine if there’s been a violation of civil rights and\/or Federal employment law? Or will these allegations be ignored and\/or swept under the rug – just like the Philadelphia NBPP election incident?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"