The Department of Homeland Security was born in the US government‘s greatest reorganization since World War II after the September 11 attacks of 2001 made the threat of terrorism very real.

It now encompasses 22 separate agencies from customs, immigration and border security to disaster relief and the Secret Service.

Homeland Security is the first line of defense against a repeat of 9/11 and stands on the front lines of the emotive controversy over illegal immigration — an area of expertise for Napolitano from her time in charge of border-state Arizona.

With 200,000 employees and an annual budget of more than 50 billion dollars, homeland security is the US government’s third-biggest department after the Pentagon and Veterans Affairs.

The White House’s DHS funding requests this year included 442 million dollars to hire 2,200 new border patrol agents for the southern frontier with Mexico, and 334 million to guard against nuclear terrorism.

But the department’s opaque spending has been criticized in a series of reports by the non-partisan investigative arm of Congress, the Government Accountability Office.

Maybe Obama and his team can sure up and lighten the load on DHS.  How about a name change to Civil Defense or something not as fascist sounding as “Homeland”.  It conjures up visions of guys dressed in black with tommy guns asking for your papers….wait!….that is wjat is happening…my bad….