The police in Salem, Oregon will be getting $13,000 in federal tax money for night vision binoculars.

WASHINGTON—The Salem Police Department will receive night-vision binoculars for their investigations department through a $13,000 Homeland Security grant, police Lt. Dave Okada said Wednesday.

The gyro-stabilized binoculars have night-vision eyepieces that allow police to see in the dark, Okada said.

Okada said he did not know yet how much of the equipment the department would get with the grant.

The grant is among 22 awards worth $350,000 for equipment and training that the Department of Homeland Security is giving to 22 Oregon cities and counties.

I’m all for fighting terrorism, and keeping our law enforcement officers well equipped, but do we really need decisions about binoculars for municipal police departments being made at the federal level?

I actually think the Department of Homeland Security is one of the biggest mistakes the Bush administration has made.  After 9/11 we certainly needed to revamp our intelligence and national defense agencies, but bolting the DHS onto an already bloated and unwieldy intelligence/defense/federal law enforcement infrastructure just hasn’t done a lot of good, I think.

In fact, the most notable things the DHS has accomplished have included spending massive amounts of tax dollars on rather absurd equipment upgrades for local law enforcement agencies.  And those things really can’t be called accomplishments.