Yo, Rick Perry, here is your third cabinet agency to get rid of. Department of Homeland Security.

From the DHS website, it's listed purpose:

Our Mission

The vision of homeland security is to ensure a homeland that is safe, secure, and resilient against terrorism and other hazards.

Now, knowing any bureaucracy has the purpose of justifying its existence and to accomplish that, mission creep is always useful, here is the latest.

US Homeland Security moves to tackle climate change risks

NEW YORK (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Protecting the infrastructure of American cities from the effects of climate change is rising on the agenda of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, according to a top agency official.

"Increasingly, we've moved not only from a security focus to a resiliency focus," said Caitlin Durkovich, assistant secretary for infrastructure protection at Homeland Security, an agency better known for its fight to curb terrorist threats.

Durkovich spoke Thursday on a panel at the Rising Seas Summit, a three-day conference organized by the U.S.-based Association of Climate Change Officers to discuss tools and ideas on building resiliency, particularly against rising sea levels.

OK, the Association of Climate Change Officers, less know as the ACCO. I only know that because I checked their website. But I looked at the "about" link and found this interesting.

About the Association of Climate Change Officers
ACCO's Board of Directors has adopted new vision and mission statements for the organization.

Mission

ACCO defines, develops and supports the functions, resources and communities necessary for effective organizational leadership in addressing climate-related risks and opportunities.

Vision

ACCO enables all organizations to be more sustainable by building enterprise capacity and empowering leadership to respond to climate change.

With the support of members, partners and sponsors, ACCO is advancing climate officers in the public and private sectors by:

Connecting members to peers, thought leaders and decision makers across sectors;

Synthesizing original and third party research findings to produce reports published in our Knowledge Center;

Producing a suite of industry leading education and training events, including the GreenGov Symposium, Climate Strategies Forum and ACCO’s
Climate Change Leadership Series; and

Helping organizations develop best practices for climate-related response strategies and identifying opportunities for collaboration with other experts and interested parties.

ACCO services climate change professionals worldwide from sectors including:

Public & private corporations;

Municipal, state, regional & Federal governmental organizations;

Colleges & universities; and

Non-profit organizations.

Sounds like a real fun place to work. More like a group of oxygen thieves taking federal grant money. Something this stupid has to be government funded.

In the aftermath of 2012's Hurricane Sandy, which devastated large swathes of the Northeastern U.S and caused over $60 billion in damages, Durkovich said her department reviewed the task of rebuilding with a new focus on "how to think about baking in resilience from the get-go."

To that end, she said, she has assembled a team of specialists, including city planners, in conjunction with the National Academy of Science to develop better tools for planning.

The Department of Homeland Security already has launched regional efforts to assess resilience of infrastruction and judge where gaps in adaptation and preparedness may be, she said.

For example, the Portland, Maine area is being looked at in terms of risks from rising sea level, how floods might be mitigated and how to deal with saltwater intrusion into what had been bodies of fresh water. The results will then be shared with other coastal communities, she said.

California, which has the country's second longest coastline after that of Alaska, also is looking increasingly at climate change adaptation and resilience, said fellow panelist Ken Alex, senior policy advisor and director of the California Governor's Office of Planning and Research...

Legitimate issues, all of them. Don't we already have an Corps of Engineers for flood control issues. Hasn't the Departments of Interior and HUD have their hands in this. Well why does DHS have to come into this. They aren't busy enough fingering children and 90 year olds in the airport.

Sounds like another worthless federal agency pushing mission creep to justify a larger budget and staff. Hopefully a conservative gets into office and removes this disgrace from the GW Bush administration. Unfortunately I have my doubts.