The Washington Post reports that

The Washington Post reports that the State Department failed to obtain a warrant for the arrest of John Muhammad after a State Department employee in Antigua reported to her superiors that she suspected Muhammad of having committed a crime by giving her a forged birth certificate. According to the Post, if the State Department had obtained a warrant for his arrest, Muhammad would have been detained when he tried to return to the United States and would have faced a federal charge carrying a sentence of up to 10 years in prison. Thus, his Washington D.C. shooting spree probably would not have occurred. Meanwhile, Joel Mowbray of National Review Online reports that Senate Democrats are fighting for the confirmation of Maura Harty as head of the Consular Affairs office at the State Department. And, according to Mowbray, the Republicans may go along with it. Ms. Harty helped formulate the “Visa Express” program which let in three of the September 11 terrorists. She also was in charge of dealing with overseas abductions of American children and incurred the wrath of the parents of victims through what the parent of two girls kidnapped in Saudi Arabia calls “indifference bordering on hostility to the interests of American parents.” Mowbray makes a convincing case that Harty is part of the State Department’s “courtesy culture” that has given rise to the gaping holes in our border security. Such as the one John Muhammad crawled through when the State Department didn’t see fit to follow up on the suspicions of its employee in Antigua.