RNS Quote of the Day: 03/05/08

Found at the Instaman’s place

Perhaps I am too jaded by excess air travel, but most of our homeland security seems designed to

A) Increase the power of congressmen and agency heads or

B) Put on a show for the yokels

rather than

C) Make us safer

Homeland security is the conservative version of the national healthcare plans I keep reading. Sure, in theory this new agency is going to make us all safer. But the plans all seem to rely on the interest group politics, bureaucratic dysfunction, and congressional power games that have produced the immense problems in our current system somehow magically disappearing. Instead, the thing gets more expensive, and less efficient.

Megan McArdle

I think Joe has an entire category at his place for Security Theater. (OK, upon further review, it turns out he doesn’t, but he is so good at spotting it that he should. “Crap for Brains” is just too general a category.)

Speaking of which, as I mentioned previously, I’ll be flying to GBRIII. Anyone with tips on how to take a full-on, scoped EBR through check-in can leave them in the comments or email me.

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3 Responses to RNS Quote of the Day: 03/05/08

  1. Joe Huffman says:

    You are right. I should create a tag for TSA (A Security Theater). Give me a week or two.

  2. David says:

    You shouldn’t have any problems. I’ve flown out of San Francisco with multiple guns and never a problem. It is very fun to watch the ticket-taker’s face go white when you say “I need to declare an unloaded firearm, please.” After a second, they go get their supervisor, who tells them what to do and it’s all good from there.

    The TSA guys have always been very professional and say admiring comments about the guns, too.

  3. Bruce Scheier has a good post up about Terrorism Theater

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