Republicans Anonymous

We can afford $170 billion for Iraq, but not $0.0009 billion ($0.9 million) for law enforcement? Compare the impressive headline to the real world of law "enforcement" described between the lines in this Washington Post's story:

10,000 Fugitives Are Captured In Huge Dragnet
By Dan Eggen and Jamie Stockwell
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, April 15, 2005; Page A01

The U.S. Marshals Service and local police agencies arrested more than 10,000 fugitives last week in an aggressive nationwide sweep that ranks as the largest single dragnet in U.S. history, the Justice Department announced yesterday.
...
Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales said the large number of arrests was the result of a "concentrated, intensive effort" that is not possible under normal circumstances.
...
From April 4 to Sunday, 10,340 fugitives were arrested and nearly 14,000 warrants were cleared as part of the operation, officials said. More than 3,000 federal agents and local police officers worked on the raids each day, and more than 900 separate agencies were involved.

Not normally possible to track down criminals in this post 9/11 world? That doesn't sound very Republican. Just how much effort was expended? Let's go to the other half of the story, what Paul Harvey would call Page 2:

Federal officials said Operation Falcon cost the Marshals Service about $900,000.
...
"We generally try to focus our resources on the baddest of the bad. We're going after murderers, rapists, that kind of thing," (Deputy U.S. Marshal Ricardo) Guzman said. "On the average day, we can't do every carjacker or person wanted on failure to pay child support."

But last week, he said, "we decided to get as many as we can. We put everybody on the street with a stack of warrants and said, 'Start knocking on doors.' "
Source: Washington Post 10,000 Fugitives are captured April 15, 2005.

Why can't Alberto Gonzales routinely spend 1/40th of the Bush Inaugural Orgy's budget chasing criminals in a post 9/11 world? Call me unreasonable, but letting known criminals wander around free because you're busy interrogating librarians about brown people's preferred reading probably causes lots more damage to public morality than video games, or even Hollywood movies...