'Embarrassing' jihadi comments could have stopped San Bernardino

The same Obama administration that scrutinizes tea party groups and listens to Americans' phone calls refused to check Facebook to catch a Muslim terrorist. 

"It doesn't make any sense," says longtime conservative activist Gary Bauer, responding to reports that San Bernardino terrorist Tashfeen Malik openly talked about Jihad on social media. 

The New York Times broke the story Dec. 12 that the Department of Homeland Security was barred from reviewing an immigration applicant's social media posts as part of the screening process.

Malik passed three background checks and moved from Pakistan to the United States in 2014 with her husband, Syed Farook.

Last month, Malik and Farook gunned down 14 people at a Dec. 2 Christmas party before law enforcement killed them in a gun battle.

When Americans learn troubling facts like that, says Bauer, they either fear something "nefarious" is going on or that their government is paralyzed by political correctness.

Between those two scenarios, it could be the latter.

A former DHS official said DHS officials debated the issue of reviewing social media and the idea was opposed by the Office of Civil Liberties and the Office of Privacy, which are departments within DHS.

"The primary concern was that it would be viewed negatively if it was disclosed publicly," said the former official, John Cohen. "And there were concerns that it would be embarrassing."

A visa applicant from Pakistan is an alien and has no expectation of privacy under U.S. civil rights laws, argued Andrew C. McCarthy in a National Review commentary. 

"It is not enough to say that these signs of the Islamist mindset were missed by security and intelligence agencies," McCarthy wrote. "Our government chose to miss them."