Professional. (Student.)

Recall that test that I went in to get? Turns out that I got a 92. It was a take-home test that my professor had given to us two weeks before, and I started working on it just after midnight of the morning that it was to be turned in. My wife is furious at me for getting an A on something that I put so little effort into (It's 40% of my semester grade.). "You'll never learn if you don't get stomped with a D or something when you do that! Instead, you get rewarded for procrastinating!" she fumed. "How do you do that?!?" (It was just a 12 page paper, plus a page of works cited.)

"I did it because this is the crap that I've been thinking about for over ten years," I answered. This is what I do."

And by that, I mean that I evaluate the state of our Homeland Security from a street-level bureaucrat's perspective, and from a graduate student's perspective.

And I play with kids in sandboxes like this one, and this one, and this one, and... well, lots of smart folk.

My evaluation of Homeland Security is that we're spending $58 Billion a year real money (and losing another ~$40B) for something that doesn't work. The guys that we're catching? The cases are thin, man. They're usually turned in or caught by citizens. And TSA, which won't publish its efficacy (National Security, don't you know) is rumored to be missing 70% of what it's there for, while being proven publicly to be responsible for thefts, frauds, inappropriate gropings, ridicule by public servants, and general abuse of office.

How many freedoms do we want to give up? Remember how we said "They hate us for our freedom?" Have we decided "Well there's your problem, right there!"?!?

Can we just admit that the terrorists won?

Bin Laden and his ilk, as disgusting as they are, have been completely successful. They have succeeded even beyond their own wildest dreams: they've got us taking our own freedoms away, so that they don't have to.

We're handling crying little three year-old girls as they sob and scream "stop touching me!"

We're manhandling amputee librarians until they are driven to tears.

We're groping nuns.

Why? So that planes won't fall out of the sky? Or just crash for no apparent reason?

Recall that we got into this frenzy after a bunch of religious extremists took over aircraft with box cutters, 9 years ago. We mandated lockable, hardened cockpit doors. We allowed pilots to go armed. We changed policy from "do what they say at all costs." Our passengers have learned to attack their attackers.

This isn't working.

Fire the TSA, keep the locked cockpit doors and armed pilots, and use the savings to put a few more Air Marshals on the flights. Otherwise, take us back to September 10, 2001, or before.

In the mean time, opt out, and then formally lodge your complaints against what's going on.


___________________
Hat Tips:
Breda: First They Came For The Gimps "

Alan: Abolish The TSA "Like the war on (some) drugs, the negative externalities arising from the TSA are costing us dearly for no benefit."


Say Uncle: "Personally, I’ll be driving whenever it’s practical."