National security does not need to be a political monopoly for Republicans in American politics. Democrats must take security seriously, and I hope that the new Democratic majority in congress will make that abundantly clear and that they will do this by voting for the kind of security that this country needs. I'm talking about smarter strategies for homeland security, including making that department streamlined, and to make some sense of the large sums of money pumped into that area in the private sector now. It seems like a free-for-all, whereas the traditional defense sector seems to be dominated by a few monolithic corporations who frequently win no-bid contracts from the government--and probably because no one else has the infrastructure that they do.

Some think tankers wrote an interesting article in the Washington Post a few weeks ago on how national security will not necessarily be dominated by Republicans in the future, as the changes in partisan politics history demonstrate.