In yet another case of "It's not what you know, it's who you know" the is reporting that the day after Tom Ridge was named the head of Homeland Security, he visited the Arizona home of a friend who represented companies that later received homeland security contracts. The home was that of David Girard-diCarlo, a prominent Bush-Cheney fundraiser. At the time of the trip, Girard-diCarlo represented Raytheon, one of a team of companies awarded border protection security work. This is work that Homeland Securtiy is paying upwards of $10 billion for over the next ten years.

The article also points out that many of Ridge's aides had been hired by Girard-diCarlo's lobbying firm, Blank Rome, including Ridge's former chief of staff when he was Pennsylvania governor, Mark Holman. It seems that rather than protecting Americans, this administration is helping to pay for a lot of friends' really nice vacations.