I just read this from the UPI:

WASHINGTON — Lawmakers approved the final version of the $29.4 billion funding bill for the new Department of Homeland Security Wednesday, but on a party-line vote Republicans rejected an amendment imposing a deadline for the screening of air cargo, which many see as a big hole in the nation’s aviation security.

“I’m very disappointed,” Rep. Martin Sabo, D-Minn., told United Press International in an interview, and Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., said the decision “left the backdoor in aviation security wide open.”

…

Homeland security experts say that — with al-Qaida apparently still determined to strike U.S. aviation targets — it is all too conceivable that terrorists might try to put a bomb aboard an airliner by shipping it.

And then just a couple of days ago, Dan Reed of USA Today writes:

Charles McKinley, 25, of the Bronx, N.Y., was discovered Saturday morning inside a crate being delivered to his parents’ home in DeSoto, Texas. Delivery driver Billy Ray Thomas of Pilot Air Freight told police that he was unloading the crate when he noticed eyes looking at him from between the slats in the cargo crate. Startled, Thomas tore open the crate expecting to find a body.

Is this what we get from our billions of tax dollars, our lost Patriot Act liberties, and our ominous-sounding Department of Homeland Security? Remember our new-found need for tighter security after 19 mostly-Saudi hijackers took over four jumbo jets through the intimidating use of box cutters? Two years after three-thousand Americans lost their lives we’re still playing partisan games when it comes to protecting our country.

Ah, but protecting our country might cost some companies a little bit of money. An editorial in the Boston Globe dated 9/15/2003 adds:

The Bush administration opposes Markey’s amendment on grounds that it is not feasible to check all containers, and the administration does not want to deprive the airlines of the $3 billion they earn with the shipments.

Now would this be the same set of companies we taxpayers have repeatedly bailed out of bankruptcy? The same ones who cried for more bailout money to avoid massive layoffs, then went ahead and performed massive layoffs after they received our $15 billion bailout?

Our politicians continue to coddle the airline industry, meanwhile a 25-year-old idiot from the Bronx flies undetected in the belly of a jumbo jet. And we pay a $10 “Sept 11 Security Fee” on top of all the taxes and surcharges on a typical coach-class flight, all for the privilege of long lines, pat downs, removing our shoes and belts and watches and earrings, total strangers pawing through our luggage, and the occasional strip search.

Do you feel any safer?

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