Any conservative or libertarian saw this coming a parsec away, but who the hell listens to us?

In a screeching, mindless, Chicken Little panic in Washington, airport security was turned over for no perceivable reason to the Feds. Now, they are searching old ladies, confiscating nail clippers, letting knives go through, molesting people, refusing reasonable profiling, hiring the wrong people, and generally making life a living hell for the flying public while in no measurable way increasing our security. Reasonable solutions like arming pilots are rejected out of hand.

And suddenly, costs skyrocket, and the "fledgling agency," as they put it, is well on the way to becoming another bloated, flatulent, ineffective, money-sucking Federal black hole. At what point are we going to learn? Good God, it only took a few months for this to happen.

One notes that the new "fledgling agency" already has the standard tricks down, including threatening to drain funds from some critical government program unless new funding is found:

...Unless Congress appropriates billions more dollars for security, concern is growing that funding may be diverted from two other priorities: improving aviation safety and reducing runway congestion.

In local politics, this "critical program in danger" is usually fire protection or libraries. In Federal Programs the potential victim is usually Social Security, but apparently it was too difficult to tie aviation funds to Social Security.

Norm Mineta is a disgrace, and if Bush had any gonads, he'd be out of there.

Crap, you'd almost think Mineta was a Democrat the way he acts. ;)

This was so predictable. It happens every time someone puts a new Federal program into place, yet there are those among us who still feel that we should turn as much of our lives as possible over to Washington.