The resignation of San Diego mayor Dick Murphy opens up a slot on the list of the three worst big-city mayors in the US.
I nominate Portland’s Tom Potter, the terrorism-friendly mayor who doesn’t want the FBI looking for bad guys in his town. Here’s what the local paper said about his hissy-fit against the FBI:
“We have a population of extremists who engage in criminal behavior in our community,” Foxworth wrote the mayor. “Nonsupport of the JTTF would cause long-term damage to our reputation and credibility within the law enforcement community. This will likely weaken our relationships with remaining law-enforcement partners and break down lines of communication.”
Translation: Portland’s withdrawal from the task force would only help to disconnect the dots. And that’s chilling. As we all remember, the intelligence failure that enabled the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to succeed was a failure to share and synthesize information.
Portland, as a crucial member of the FBI task force, second only to the FBI, is a key dot. Its withdrawal would only diminish the effectiveness of FBI anti-terrorism investigations. The mayor and the Portland City Council should do everything in their power to keep those dots tightly connected.
And they endorsed him.