NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly attended a farewell speech for outgoing Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano on Friday, raising further speculation that he may be a top choice to succeed her. But it wasn't just Kelly's presence that rekindled the belief that the Obama administration is seriously considering the commissioner for the post: Vice President Joe Biden gave Kelly a fist bump on his way from the lectern, which just a few years ago, might have attracted attention from the NYPD's Demographics Unit.
As we've detailed before, choosing Kelly for a federal post is puzzling because he has spent his tenure as commissioner clashing with the federal government. Within the last month a federal judge ruled his use of stop-and-frisk unconstitutional and a book by two AP reporters showed that the NYPD profiles innocent people based solely on their religion.
"Our sin is to have the temerity, the chutzpah, to go into the federal government's territory of counterterrorism and trying to protect this city by supplementing what the federal government has done," Kelly recently said. Also: the "chutzpah" to praise whistleblower Edward Snowden for no other reason than to insult the Justice Department, which had in turn suggested that the NYPD needed a federal monitor.
No word on whether this Ohio woman will become the next Secretary of Transportation.
