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Republican Michigan Congresswoman Candice Miller this week criticized the Obama administration for failing to provide better border security, insisting that it was "not rocket scientry."

A bipartisan group of senators known as the "Gang of Eight" -- led by Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Charles Schumer (D-NY) -- announced Tuesday a comprehensive immigration reform bill that was expected to include a 13-year pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants and $5.5 billion in increased spending on border security over 10 years.

Although the bill would reportedly require border security operations to be fully functional before any of the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants could apply for permanent residency or citizenship, many conservative Republicans say the bill doesn't go far enough.

In a Tuesday segment on NPR's Morning Edition, several Republican lawmakers said that they flatly opposed comprehensive immigration reform at this time.

"My position would be if you're serious about securing the border, go secure it and then come back and talk to us," Rep. Steve King (R-IA) quipped.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has said that some conservatives could be using concerns about the border as an excuse to perpetually oppose reform.

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Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer was terribly upset with the news that this sequester battle is going to end up cutting into the profits of her buddies in the private prison industry: Jan Brewer: Freeing Immigrant Detainees Is ‘Height Of Absurdity’:

Arizona Governor Jan Brewer (R) is not at all happy with immigration officials for releasing hundreds of detainees in anticipation of coming sequester cuts.

“I’m appalled to learn the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has begun to release hundreds of illegal aliens from custody, the first of potentially thousands to soon be freed under the guise of federal budget cuts,” Brewer told the Arizona Republic in a statement. “This is pure political posturing and the height of absurdity given that the releases are being granted before the federal sequestration cuts have even gone into effect.”

In an interview with FOX News' Neil Cavuto on Wednesday, Brewer also attacked the White House over their claim that they had no involvement with the decision, saying they were in "duck and cover mode."

Maggie's Farm at Kos has more on what really has Brewer upset: Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer 'appalled' DHS is releasing immigrants. Blow to prison industry profits:

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer's quest to imprison as many aliens as possible was steered in part by the state's powerful private prison lobby, since the "papers please" law and other tough anti-immigrant policies bring more customers to their jails. Most stories about the Department of Homeland Security releasing inmates this week have overlooked the blow to the prison industry's bottom line. It costs, for instance, about $164 a day to incarcerate one immigrant. Multiply that by tens of thousands. Day after day. [...]

Jan Brewer's been an esteemed member of the Crazy Republican Governors Club—joining lugheads like Scott Walker, Sam Brownback and Rick Scott who've embraced the tea party's "cut the deficit" gibberish, seemingly unaware of the effects in their state. Now Brewer and her looney tunes ideologues are getting a taste of Norquist's bathtub politics. She's finding out what GOP obstructionism is going to cost Arizona, and it began this week with her state's former governor, Janet Napolitano, releasing immigrants.

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer says she's appalled to hear that the Department of Homeland Security has begun releasing hundreds of illegal immigrants from custody. It's the first of potentially thousands of immigrants to soon be freed before mandatory federal budget cuts go into effect.

The reality chicken has come home to roost in the guise of nearly 31,000 immigrants held in jails nationwide. That's an expensive undertaking, and the sequester will wallop DHS upside the head, necessitating huge cuts. Rather than $164 a day to incarcerate one inmate, the "supervised release" planned for prisoners who pose no serious threat costs less than $14 per day—a blow to prison profits, even if only some inmates are held in private facilities.

Gillian Christensen, an [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] spokeswoman, said ICE has reviewed "several hundred cases" of immigrants being held in jails around the country and released them in the last week. They have been "placed on an appropriate, more cost-effective form of supervised release," she said.

Of course if you watch the clip above with Brewer on Cavuto's show, you'd get the impression the opposite was true and that it was more expensive to monitor the prisoners than jail them.

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Texas Republican Rep. Louie Gohmert on Tuesday lashed out at Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and other Republican "numbnuts" who have criticized Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) for suggesting that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s deputy chief of staff, Huma Abedin, had infiltrated the U.S. government on behalf of radical Islamists in the Muslim Brotherhood.

Last week, McCain accused Bachmann, Gohmert and three other Republican lawmakers of "specious and degrading attacks" after they called on inspectors general in the State, Homeland Security, Defense and Justice departments to investigate “potential Muslim Brotherhood infiltration” of the Obama administration by Huma Abedin, an aide to Secretary Clinton and wife of former Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY).

Other Republicans like House Speaker John Boehner, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, Wisconsin Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner and former Bachmann campaign manager Ed Rollins have also condemned the anti-Muslim accusations.

"Well, it’s obvious that John McCain didn’t even read the letter because of what he said in accusing Michele and us of making these horrible accusations," Gohmert told conservative radio host Dennis Miller on Tuesday.

"And I wish some of these numbnuts would go out and read the letter before they make these horrible allegations about the horrible accusations we’re making."

He added: "But we also know that John McCain himself had said back in the early stages of stuff going on in Egypt that he was, in his words, 'unalterably opposed to helping the Muslim Brotherhood.' Well, obviously the unalterable person has been altered, so he is OK with it now."

Last week, Gohmert told U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano that his suggestion that Homeland Security Advisory Council member Mohamed Elibiary was working for the Muslim Brotherhood had nothing to do with the fact that he is a Muslim.

“The allegations are not because he is Muslim,” Gohmert insisted at a House Judiciary Committee hearing. “You’ve followed me around the world, you’ve seen me huggin Muslims around the world, because the ones I hug are our friends, and this administration seems to have a hard time recognizing members of terrorist groups who are allowed into the White House."

"Numbnuts" is derogatory slang term that mostly likely originated in the U.S. military. It is often used to to describe an ignorant person, but it can also imply cowardice, sterility or impotence.

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Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Janet Napolitano Tuesday laughed off attacks on her by the Drudge Report, saying that the conservative website was "just wrong" to suggest the government was overreaching in its efforts to keep Americans safe.

"I have my own nickname," Napolitano told Politico's Mike Allen. "It's kind of a deal. You know that you've made it when you get your own nickname."

"I think my nickname is 'Big Sis.' And I don't think [Matt Drudge] means it kindly, actually," she added. "I think what he means is we are watching too much -- kind of an Orwellian view. And he's just wrong -- he's just wrong."

The DHS secretary explained that her department's privacy office took great care to prevent government overreaching.

"Madam Secretary, what I thought you were going to say -- and why I really perked up -- I thought you had a nickname for him," Allen noted.

"Maybe," Napolitano replied, laughing. "No, I think we should try to keep our discussion at a high level."

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Airline passengers should get used to invasive full body scans and enhanced pat-downs, the Homeland Security secretary suggested Sunday.

CNN's Candy Crowley asked Janet Napolitano if she expected changes to the controversial Transportation Security Administration (TSA) screening procedures in the near future.

"Not for the foreseeable future," Napolitano replied.

"You know we're always looking to improve systems and so forth, but the new technology, the pat-downs, just objectively safer for our traveling public," she said.

Crowley pressed Napolitano to explain how she could claim security is improving when a recent ABC News report found a nearly 70 percent failure rate at some major airports.

But the Homeland Security secretary brushed off those reports.

"I think I know the test to which you refer, many of them are very old, and out of date and there were all kinds of methodology issues with them. Let's set those aside," she said.

"We pick up more contraband with the new procedures," she added.

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Apparently Rep. Steve King, R-Nutsville, doesn't think the Department of Justice has any lawyers capable of drawing up their own legal briefs and of course in the wingnuts like King's world, if the brief agrees with anything in the ACLU's lawsuit against Arizona's immigration law SB 1070, the evil commie "leftist" organizations suing Arizona are really the ones running the DOJ.

After he carried on about how terrible Eric Holder, Janet Napolitano, John Morton, President Obama, Michael Posner, amd Mexican President Felipe Calderon all were for voicing their opposition to the new law, repeating the tired talking point that none of them have read it, King had this to say about some Chinese immigrants who haven't yet been deported:

King: I'll go even further. Michael Posner, the Assistant Secretary of State, he said he brought it up early and often to the Chinese that we had a problem with a law in Arizona that could bring about racial profiling. These are the people that... we've got 40,000 Chinese in the United States that have been adjudicated for deportation... the Chinese won't take them back. And we're sending them some 550 year old bones from paleo, ah... paleo vertebrates that, so they can keep their artifacts straight. We need to send them the 40,000 Chinese that they won't take. Deport them as well as the bones, Mr. Speaker.

Nice. Should we just box them up with the bones, Steve King? What a jerk. Then we get to this wingnut hackery.

King: And I'll make this further prediction now Mr. Speaker. That is that the announcement came out today that the Justice Department under Eric Holder, it now has a legal brief that recommends that they bring suit against Arizona. Here's my prediction. ACLU has written that legal brief for the Justice Department... that a-political, nonpolitical Justice Department has a brief that one day we'll get our hands on, a draft brief... release the draft is what needs to happen from the Attorney General, but in that draft we'll find the ACLU that's already sued Arizona with a 98 page case, there's the document that they're using to put their brief together in the Justice Department. The President gave the order to the Attorney General to look into Arizona's law and a Justice Department under Attorney General Holder looked at the lawsuit that's been brought by the ACLU and MALDEF and other organizations that are hard core left wing including SEIU and they have lifted the language right out of that lawsuit and that will be the draft Mr. Speaker.

That's my prediction and I put my marker down. When we get our hands on the draft from the Attorney General's office I will take that draft and I will take the language and I will highlight the language right out of the ACLU's lawsuit and I'll show you how the Justice Department lifted that language out of the lawsuit of the ACLU and MALDEF, the Mexican American Legal Defense Foundation and put it right into their draft advisory and the federal government will be conducting and carrying out the order of the President in a nonpolitical office, supposedly according to Holder's testimony at the direction of the ACLU and MALDEF and La Raza and the other organizations, the SEIU and many others that are hard core leftist organizations in this country. If we're going to have the rule of law it's got to be impartial, it's got to be objective, it's got to be Constitutional, it's got to be statutory and it's got to be consistent with case law. Arizona's law is all of those things but this Justice Department's unjustified attacks on Arizona is anything but.

It's a conspiracy... oh my! The leftists are telling the White House and the DOJ what to do. Don't I wish. If that were the case we'd have the Bush administration prosecuted for war crimes, Rove would be in jail for the AG scandal and his part in putting Don Siegelman in prison and that's just the start of the list. As usual there's no amount of race-baiting this wingnut won't use for political advantage.

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Peggy Noonan thinks the Democrats are conspiring and intentionally allowing the border to remain open just to get an immigration bill passed. Contrary to Noonan's nonsense, the Democrats have actually included border security in their proposed legislation. Janet Napolitano did a good job but Scarborough and Noonan attacked her after she was off the air.

Media Matters debunked Michael Barone pushing a similar right wing talking point:

Oblivious to tough reform proposal, Barone suggests Dems won't include "border-enforcement":

In his May 1 column, Michael Barone falsely claimed Democrats "don't seem to be planning to include" border-enforcement provisions in their plans for immigration reform. In fact, the outline released by Senate Democrats includes extensive enforcement provisions that reportedly "would be more far-reaching than anything in place now" or proposed by the Bush administration.

In fact, immigration reform outline released by Democrats prioritizes border security

Democratic plan sets border security benchmarks that "must be met before action can be taken to adjust the status" of those currently in the U.S. illegally. The "conceptual proposal for immigration reform" recently released by Senate Democrats lists eight border security benchmarks that must be met before the government will adjust the legal status of unauthorized immigrants currently in the U.S. Read on...

I don't like what they're proposing with the ID card and I think that's going to have some real problems ever getting passed. I have to hand it to Noonan though since she was just as harsh with Bush on immigration. Too Bad President Bush has torn the conservative coalition asunder. So she is at least consistent with her freak outs over the brown people who are already doing her gardening, maid work, trash pickup and cooking invading our country.

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Trying to give merit to the right wing meme that the British Petroleum oil spill is somehow "Obama's Katrina", Chris Wallace rolls out a time line which implies that the Obama administration did not respond immediately to the disaster. Sec. Napolitano and Sec. Salazar pushed back and explained how the administration responded to the disaster from "the first hours of the explosion".

Media Matters has a detailed timeline of their own up to rebut this nonsense as well. Memo to media: Timeline contradicts "Obama's Katrina" claim:

A timeline of events following the catastrophic Gulf of Mexico oil spill belies the absurd media claim that the spill represents "Obama's Katrina."

April 20 (10 p.m.): Oil rig explosion. An April 21 ABCNews.com article reported, "An overnight explosion in the Gulf of Mexico rocked the Deepwater Horizon oil rig off the Louisiana coast, sending spectacular bursts of flame into the sky. The fires were still raging today." The U.S. Coast Guard's National Oil and Hazardous Substances Response System assigns primary responsibility for cleaning up oil spills to the spiller as the responsible party.

April 21: Deputy Secretary of Interior, Coast Guard dispatched to region. An April 22 White House statement noted that following a briefing with President Obama, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Thad Allen, Department of Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, EPA Deputy Administrator Bob Perciasepe, and FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate, "Deputy Secretary of the Interior David Hayes was dispatched to the region yesterday to assist with coordination and response." The Coast Guard announced that four units were responding to the fire, with additional units en route. Read on...

Transcript below the fold.

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Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told ABC's Jake Tapper that authorities had not found any evidence that the bomb scare in New York City was part of a larger plot.

"We have no evidence right now that this is anything other than a one off," said Napolitano.

The federal government is treating the incident as a potential terrorist attack.

UPDATE (Nicole): Pakistani Taliban claim responsibility for NYC bomb scare

UPDATE 2 (Nicole): The NYPD is discounting any foreign presence in the failed car bombing. Per HuffPo:

New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly announced at a press conference this afternoon that the NYPD is working on several leads related to Saturday night's failed car bomb attack in Times Square.

Kelly said the police identified the owner of the Nissan Pathfinder used in the plot. Investigators are also analyzing a video of a white male, in his 40s who was seen acting suspiciously around the car.

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Helen Thomas presses John Brennan and Janet Napolitano during the White House press conference on the Christmas Underwear bomber on why Al Qaeda wants to attack us -- and of course never gets an answer to her question before they move on to the next reporter.

I'm sure if Brennan had answered her honestly he would have been immediately attacked by Republicans for giving aid and comfort to the terrorists and for not loving America since that would mean admitting how awful our foreign policy is.