The major problem with this halfwitted administration is that it has never thought about where the real things are. All they ever do is decide what are the outcomes they want and, until now, it has always been someone else's job to provide them.
Now there is no-one to rescue them from their own stupidity so, at last, we see what they are really capable of doing. In a word, nothing.
The latest on the Southwest Airlines security fiasco tells it all. A 20 year old student did NOT place weapons in a couple of planes 2 weeks ago. That was the SECOND time he had done it. The first was in February; and they were not discovered till April. The TSA and the media did nothing about it so he repeated the stunt and gave them enough leads so they could actually find him.
The reality is that no aircraft can be made safe, nor can airports. There's a reasonable limit to what you can achieve and after that it is all pretty pictures. The danger comes in assuming, or advertising that you now have the safest air travel system in the universe or some such crap.
You haven't, you can't have, it doesn't exist. I think the TSA people have unconsciously figured this out so they put on a dog and pony show most of the time, and do the minimum necessary after that because they know there is in fact nothing they can do to stop a determined terrorist.
There are risks not because your policing is inadequate but because the US foreign policy, its economic and political bullying, its contempt for the rest of the world makes it unsafe to be an American anywhere. A threshhold has been crossed and there are now vast holes in the security of the US because everyone hates and despises it and enough people are sufficiently enraged to do something about it.
So now we have the idiot law enforcement people trying to prosecute Nathaniel T. Heatwole for breaking the law. At least one US Pol seems to have understood a little of the reality.
Rather than prosecute Heatwole, the government should hire him as a consultant to show the TSA where security loopholes exist, Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) said yesterday. Heatwole's alleged actions are "a giant warning signal to the Transportation Security Administration,"
Damned right, now can he please apply that clear thinking to US foreign policies?