Democrats to push to fill US transport security post


WASHINGTON, Dec 29 (Reuters) - Spurred by last week's failed attack on a
U.S.-bound jetliner, Senate Democrats will try to break a deadlock and
confirm President Barack Obama's choice to run the Transportation
Security Administration, a Senate aide said on Tuesday.

Majority Leader Harry Reid will schedule a vote when the Senate returns
in January from its holiday recess to break the hold Republican Senator
Jim DeMint put on the nomination of counter-terrorism official Erroll
Southers, Reid's spokesman Jim Manley said.

"In light of the outrageous and petty move by Senator DeMint, Senator
Reid intends to file cloture when we get back," Manley said.

Obama in September tapped Southers, a former FBI special agent who is
assistant chief for homeland security and intelligence for the Los
Angeles World Airports Police Department.

DeMint blocked the nomination, saying that Southers would unionize the
TSA, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security.

Breaking the hold one senator can put on a nomination requires 60 votes
of the Senate's 100 members.

Lawmakers have said filling the TSA post has taken on new urgency after
the Christmas Day incident on a commercial flight from Amsterdam to
Detroit in which passengers and crew overwhelmed a man who set alight an
explosive device.

Farouk Abdulmutallab, 23, was charged with smuggling explosives on board
and attempting to blow up a Northwest Airlines flight with almost 300
people on board.

Another key counter-terrorism post, the head of the Customs and Border
Protection Agency, has not been filled and the Senate has yet to hold a
hearing on Obama's choice for that job, former U.S. Attorney Alan
Bersin. (Washington World Desk)

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The news the GOP ass kissers here missed...there's no agency head
because a Republican U.S. Senator from South Carolina is holding up the
nomination for political reasons.