Ridge to resign from Homeland Security Dept.

Posted November 30, 2004, 12:52 p.m.

Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge will announce his resignation from the Bush cabinet today, according to mainstream media reports. Ridge was the first secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, which was formed in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

The creation of DHS was the largest reorganization of the federal government since the creation of the Department of Defense in 1947.

While it is normal for a round of resignations and new appointments when a president wins reelection, Ridge and six previous resignations since the election account for nearly 47 percent of President Bush’s fifteen-member cabinet. Ridge joins Secretary of State Colin Powell, Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman, Education Secretary Rod Paige, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, Attorney General John Ashcroft, and Commerce Secretary Donald Evans.

President Bush has so far only announced four replacement nominations, and all nominees must be confirmed by the Senate before taking office.

Scott Bradford has been putting his opinions on his website since 1995—before most people knew what a website was. He has been a professional web developer in the public- and private-sector for over twenty years. He is an independent constitutional conservative who believes in human rights and limited government, and a Catholic Christian whose beliefs are summarized in the Nicene Creed. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Public Administration from George Mason University. He loves Pink Floyd and can play the bass guitar . . . sort-of. He’s a husband, pet lover, amateur radio operator, and classic AMC/Jeep enthusiast.

Quotes

The line between failure and success is so fine that we scarcely know when we pass it—so fine that we are often on the line and do not know it.

It appeared to me that there were two paths to truth, [science and faith,] and I decided to follow both of them.

Ideally, science is a process, not a position or a belief system.

We reason deeply, when we forcibly feel.

For the law holds, that it is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer.

I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!

The question is not what power the federal government ought to have, but what powers in fact have been given by the people. . . . The federal union is a government of delegated powers. It has only such as are expressly conferred upon it and such as are reasonably to be implied from those granted.

There is . . . a close bond and necessary relation between . . . freedom and productive industry. This proposition is generally true of all nations, but especially of democratic nations.

To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical.

Let us recollect that peace or war will not always be left to our option; that however moderate or unambitious we may be, we cannot count upon the moderation, or hope to extinguish the ambition of others.

A vote is like a rifle: its usefulness depends upon the character of the user.

As a general rule, the higher the culture, the simpler the style and the plainer the speech.

When a man is getting better he understands more and more clearly the evil that is still left in him. When a man is getting worse he understands his own badness less and less.

We’re all putting on an act and hoping the audience buys it.

Life is not fair. It is tempting to believe that government can rectify what nature has spawned. But it is also important to recognize how much we benefit from the very unfairness we deplore.

Although you perform many works, if you do not deny your will and submit yourself, losing all solicitude about yourself and your affairs, you will not make progress.

In truth, mankind cannot be saved from without, by schoolmasters or any other sort of masters: it can only be lamed and enslaved by them.

Today’s scientists have substituted mathematics for experiments, and they wander off through equation after equation, and eventually build a structure which has no relation to reality.

Reason alone is sufficient to recognize the inviolable value of each single human life. . . .

For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, inhuman, implacable, slanderers, profligates, fierce, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding the form of religion but denying the power of it. Avoid such people.