What could go wrong?

Less than twelve years ago, 19 al-Qaeda terrorists infiltrated the US, hijacked four planes, and killed nearly 3,000 people in attacks on New York City and Washington, DC. Fifteen of those Islamist terrorists came from one country — Saudi Arabia.  In response, the US tightened up its security profile in immigration and air travel, imposing [...]

Read this post »

No wonder credit ratings agencies are less than impressed.

Say, are you getting frustrated by long lines at the airport?  Janet Napolitano wants you to know that the sequester is to blame for your woes.  Following up on a more general warning she gave a week ago about the impact of the sequester, the DHS Secretary said yesterday that wait times had already gone [...]

Read this post »

Wha?

A day old but too amazing not to blog. Honestly, if you’d asked me to guess how this poll would have broken, I probably would have said 12/54. Second look at crotch patdowns? Despite recent negative press, a majority of Americans, 54%, think the U.S. Transportation Security Administration is doing either an excellent or a [...]

Read this post »

Comedians, let the field day commence.

From The Right Scoop, initially blogged by PJ Media: As of Thursday, August 2, 2012, the Transportation Security Administration has agreed to unionize. The agency, best known for groping and offending Americans as we attempt to fly from one part of the country to the other, has agreed to allow the American Federation of Government [...]

Read this post »

Defiance.

Earlier this month, we checked in on the TSA scanner issue and found out the federal agency has been ignoring a year-old federal court order to hold public hearings and comment on the controversial back-scatter machines used in screenings. Wednesday, the same federal court demanded the TSA explain itself, as reported by the good folks [...]

Read this post »

Security.

So, what’ll you have while you wait for your flight: beer, juice, cola, coffee, tea? The TSA is not buying, mind you, but inquiring minds at that agency want to know. In fact their curiosity is such that they want you to volunteer part of your drink so that they can test it at the [...]

Read this post »

Fiscal conservative?

Who says Barack Obama isn’t working to reduce government spending as promised? Why, in March he proposed reducing funding by half for the Federal Flight Deck Officer Program. This is a program that permits commercial airline pilots to keep firearms in the cockpit and to use lethal force to defend against air piracy. The measure [...]

Read this post »

Maybe they should get strip-searched.

Say, wouldn’t it be ironic if an agency of the federal government wasted hundreds of millions of dollars? Er … no, not really. It’s what federal agencies do, isn’t it?  Well, then, what if this agency was responsible for security and enforced transparency on millions of Americans every day, but then got caught obstructing justice [...]

View the video »

Most transparent Administration ever!

Apparently the only connection between the TSA and transparency are all of our images as we pass through their scanners at the airport.  A big hat tip to Josh Gerstein at Politico for highlighting this account late last week by Michael Grabell at ProPublica: In my first week at ProPublica in June 2008, I filed [...]

Read this post »

Bachmann's challenge.

Last week, the Obama administration attempted to float the notion that the war on terror was over, probably in anticipation of its celebrations this week of the mission that killed Osama bin Laden.  National Journal got the officially unofficial leak from the White House about the nomenclature change, as well as an almost-immediate retreat:  “The [...]

Read this post »

Anomaly in the crotch area

I’ve been doing a lot of business travel in the last couple of weeks, (explaining my temporary absence from these pages, much to the relief of many I’m sure) and have had the chance to reacquaint myself with our old friends at the TSA. Now, as Ed and I have discussed on past trips, I [...]

Read this post »

Trusted travelers

An idea long overdue in my opinion. The Wall Street Journal reports that a pilot program is already in place for two airlines at nine airports where you can skip the TSA nudie scans and gropings, zipping through the airport almost as fast as you did before 9/11. You can leave on your shoes, your [...]

Read this post »

Dude.

In case you missed it at Drudge, Wired, the Daily Mail, the Daily News, or any of the thousand other sites where it’s been posted today. The good news: TSA has seen the clip, so if this guy is telling the truth, they’re aware of the problem and — presumably — working to fix it. [...]

View the video »

"Let's just be clear, the passenger was not detained."

The worst part of this is Jay Carney’s vaguely creepy insistence on using bureaucracy lingo in referring to Paul throughout as “the passenger.” That’s actually a nifty reflection of TSA’s philosophy of treating fliers equally badly so long as they’re treated equally. We’re all random passengers, none of us any more or less a security [...]

View the video »

Brilliant.

On one hand, if it’s true that the Transportation Security Administration really saw an anomaly in the airport body scan, then a demand for a patdown would be the right call.  On the other, just how big of a security risk does a sitting United States Senator pose — unless it’s one that has openly [...]

Read this post »

Plus, Quebec Corner's Politically Correct Christmas

Ahhh … Christmas and politics. Is there any better combination? Actually, Christmas might be the one time of year we’d all prefer to forget our political convictions — at least where extended family is concerned — but these videos make it irresistibly fun to remember them. So, as an early Christmas present, I present to you Remy’s [...]

View the video »

1.8 million a month?

How many people actually suffer through TSA patdowns at airports?  Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano says, “Well, actually, very, very, very few people get a pat-down.”  That’s three verys, which is kind of like a triple-dog dare — and PolitiFact decided to take up Napolitano on the dare.  As it turns out, Napolitano’s claim depends [...]

Read this post »