Something you don't see every day...a gun in a chicken in luggage on an airplane.

 I've travelled on airlines countless times with my firearm. By that I mean it's in my checked luggage. Simple to do, have it unloaded in a locked case, declare it when you check your baggage, and the TSA agent has to verify it's unloaded. 

Well, never thought of this technique to carry my weapon. 

TSA agents find gun smuggled inside raw chicken

 

A TSA agent finds a gun wrapped in a package inside a raw chicken. (Photo courtesy of the Transportation Security Administration)

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. - A person going through a airport checkpoint got caught trying to smuggle a gun inside a raw chicken and was called out by the Transportation Security Administration on social media.

Photos shared on the agency’s Twitter page shows agents removing a gun wrapped in a bag inside the chicken. "There’s a personal fowl here. Our officers at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport (FLL) @FLLFlyer made this very raw find. We hate to break it to you but stuffing a firearm in your holiday bird for travel is just a baste of time," the TSA captioned. 

Air travelers bringing guns into Florida airports is becoming an alarming trend. So far this year, the TSA reported that passengers have brought 700 guns to checkpoints, including 120 seized at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport. The agency noted in these incidents that most of the guns confiscated by agents were loaded and had ammunition in the chamber.

The TSA shared on its website that unloaded guns can be carried in a locked hard-sided container as checked baggage only. Guns and ammunition also have to be declared at the ticket counter. 

A TSA agent finds a gun wrapped in a package inside a raw chicken. (Photo courtesy of the Transportation Security Administration) 

...According to the TSA, passengers that bring an unloaded gun with accessible ammunition to a security checkpoint face a fine or civil penalty. The agency can impose civil penalties of up to $13,910 for each violation.

I think I need a new lock for my case. And no, it won't be from the meat aisle.  

TSA strikes again....

I have complete contempt for this worthless bureaucracy developed under the Bush administration (but really unleashed under the B Hussein Obama regime). They have been in existence for over ten years and if anyone can show me how it's made flying safer, please do. And now they want to expand from planes to trains, buses and boats, they will probably want to go to the movies soon. But from this morning's Houston Chronicle,

Ex-TSA officer charged with making child pornography

A former Transportation Security Administration officer remains in federal custody after he was arrested on charges of making child pornography.

Christopher Persky faces 15 to 30 years in prison if convicted.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Mary Milloy ordered that Persky remain jailed pending a hearing set for Wednesday.

On Monday evening, the TSA said in an email that Persky, 27, “has been removed from federal employment.”

An undercover Homeland Security Investigations agent allegedly snared Persky through an online chat that started on a child pornography site.

Persky allegedly took sexually explicit photographs and shared them in exchange for other images.

Likes kiddy porn and works at a job with federal civil service protection, great pay and benefits to fondle children. What could possibly go wrong.

Security Weekly: The Danger of Security Theater, November 20, 2014

By Scott Stewart

I've often written about how terrorism is a type of macabre theater, or as early anarchist terrorists referred to it, the "propaganda of the deed." As I wrote in a previous Security Weekly, the intent of terrorist planners is to create hysteria that transcends the immediate impact of their attacks by drawing other people into the trauma of their attack as vicarious victims. The goal is to maximize the social and psychological impact of physical efforts.

But terrorism theater does not exist in a vacuum. It has a counterpart that lives alongside it and largely in response to it, in some ways exerting a Newtonian opposite and equal force in misleading the public. This force is, of course, security theater — theater that is intended to abate, rather than create, hysteria. But as the name suggests, this purportedly secure facade constructed of smoke and mirrors is no more universally effective than terrorism is universally dangerous. Both terrorist attacks and security measures are real, but neither is as significant or substantial as the public is led to believe.

Acting for the Sake of Acting

Now perhaps this topic is just coming to mind because I am traveling this week, and aviation security is one area in which security theater is perhaps the most readily apparent. Highly visible, knee-jerk security measures have been implemented to stop the methods and tactics used in previous attacks, but they have very little ability to stop any future attacks that use new techniques.

The Transportation Security Administration, for example, was created in the wake of 9/11 and charged with preventing similar attacks. Following the shoe bombing attempt in December 2001, aviation security authorities enacted measures requiring passengers to remove their shoes for screening. This change in procedure caused terrorist planners to switch to alternative methods of concealing explosives, such as liquids or underwear, to smuggle them onboard aircraft. Consequently, after the 2006 discovery of a plot to smuggle explosives disguised as liquids aboard aircraft, authorities limited the amount of liquids travelers could take in their carry-on luggage. Finally, in response to the failed attempt to detonate a bomb hidden in underwear in December 2009, the Transportation Security Administration began to employ full-body scanners at airports. Indeed, aviation security has a long history of being a reactionary arms race, and I see no end to this pattern.

In truth, there is only so much that aviation security authorities can do to prevent explosives from being brought onboard an aircraft so long as passengers and luggage are permitted onboard and attackers are willing to die. But because of the hysteria caused by incidents like the failed shoe and underwear bombings — and the economic implications of such panic — authorities feel compelled to do something to reassure and calm the traveling public, even if other smuggling tactics can circumvent those measures.

Creating the Illusion of Security

Security theater is not restricted to the domain of aviation security; it is much more widespread. The typical corporate office building, for example, is "secured" by access control devices, badge readers and closed-circuit television cameras. Such measures are highly visible and help prevent low-level intrusions, but they do very little to protect facilities from clever and sophisticated criminals, brute force attacks, or perhaps most significantly, insider threats. During my career I have seen many cases of expensive access control systems being rendered useless by people propping doors open with trash cans, failing to check the identifications of people tailgating in the door behind them, or simply refusing to lock doors for the sake of convenience. In many cases, the presence of access control devices and cameras can actually create a false sense of security, a psychological crutch that can be dangerous if people assume they are safe, fail to practice good situational awareness and even go into denial at the first sign of a criminal or terrorist attack, all because they don’t think such an attack could happen at their "secure" location. This attitude often proves fatal when it causes people to ignore warning signs or go into shock and freeze.

Training can also contribute to a false sense of security. Safety training can be extremely helpful and effective, but if it is not done correctly (or sufficiently) it can lead to overconfidence and dramatic failure. When I was in high school, a kid who had taken a few Kung Fu classes became unduly cocky and was taken out with one punch by an experienced street fighter. Throughout my career as a diplomatic security special agent and corporate security manager, I have encountered many people who have received a little training and have begun to think entirely too highly of their capabilities. Closely related are the security hucksters, or self-described "security experts" who heavily self-promote their expertise for financial gain. Yet despite the multitude of initials they like to include behind their names, these hucksters have little idea of what they are doing in the real world. Whenever I encounter such people, I think of that Kung Fu kid, and of how these poorly trained charlatans are setting themselves (and their clients) up for a similar type of spectacular failure.

Getting in Touch with Reality

So what, then, is the antidote for security theater? It starts with a sober assessment of the threats facing a person, company or agency. Can the threat be defeated, or is it something that can only be contained, avoided or abated? The next step is to share that rational assessment with the people you are seeking to protect. Education is an important element of effective security, and I have found that if security managers and government officials are open and honest with their people, and explain the threat they are trying to protect against in a candid and rational manner, most people will cooperate with security programs, especially if the programs are logical and designed to protect against the threat that has been defined. Yes, there will still be people who will buck any security system, but if security managers are able to get buy-in from most of the people they are protecting and establish a good security culture, then cooperative individuals will help provide positive peer pressure for any non-conformists.

Once security managers or agency directors have formed their rational assessments, they must implement security programs and measures that are balanced, sensible and cost-effective. Will your multimillion-dollar closed-circuit television system ever be able to prevent an attack or theft? Will it ever be able to help you recover enough stolen property to pay for itself? If not, you may need to rethink spending that much money for it.

Security professionals must understand that the people they are trying to keep safe are really the best line of defense against security threats of all kinds. The protected population has many more eyes than the security staff, even in companies that employ widespread video surveillance. If people are treated as adults and buy into security programs, they can become a critical part of the solution rather than the problem. When we expand this to a larger scale and incorporate individuals into the national security strategy — if you see something, say something — citizens can become highly effective grassroots defenders. This concept is becoming especially important as the terrorist threat becomes increasingly concentrated in the grassroots itself.

While the protected people in the office (or nation) can be a great security asset, they can also become cynical and jaded if they are alienated by security personnel. Nothing pushes people away faster than hyped-up, melodramatic security theater. By making theatrical and unreasonable security claims and demands, you can lose the trust and respect of the people you are trying to protect. And as a security professional, it is extremely hard to regain a person's — or a population's — trust and respect once you have lost it.

The Danger of Security Theater is republished with permission of Stratfor.

Again I ask, why? The latest and greatest, high speed rail between Houston and Dallas.

One of the causes that I've noticed over the he last decade or so it "We need high speed rail" in California, or between California and Las Vegas, etc. Now no one seems to ask "Is there a market for this?" Translation, if you build it, will they come?

The latest and greatest comes from my adopted home state of Texas. The usual suspects want to put in a rail from Houston to Dallas.

Proposed routes for Dallas-Houston high-speed rail revealed

Texans got their first glimpses Tuesday of the potential routes a proposed bullet train could take from Dallas to Houston.

The 240-mile project, which could be the first high-speed rail line in America, is expected to get people between the two cities in 90 minutes. If funding is secured and federal approval granted, the train could be running by 2021....

...That downtown station would make it easier for Texas Central to achieve a chief goal for the project: tying in to existing public transit at both end points. Dallas City Council members Lee Kleinman and Vonciel Jones Hill lobbied for Union Station to serve as the North Texas terminus. Union Station serves two Dallas Area Rapid Transit light-rail lines, an Amtrak line and the TRE passenger train that connects Dallas and Fort Worth.

“We want the train speeding to Union Station,” Hill said to applause at the meeting at the Dallas Infomart. A handful of residents later agreed in a public hearing.

The company is eyeing four general areas for the Houston station. One is downtown; the three others are northwest of the city center....

...Texas Central plans to build the project completely with private funds and has already begun soliciting investors. Although the company has not said how much the project will cost, estimates put the amount at about $10 billion.

The company has the power to use eminent domain for the project. The two routes selected for closer consideration largely follow existing rail lines or utility rights of way, which would minimize the need for land purchases or seizure.

The company estimates it needs only 3,000 acres between Dallas and Houston in addition to existing rights of way to build the 240-mile line.

Government officials estimate that the drive from Dallas to Houston, which now takes about four hours, could take six hours by 2035. They estimate the average speed on I-45 between the two cities will drop from 60 mph to 40 mph over that time.

A major contributor to the additional traffic is the expected population growth in both metropolitan areas.

“It’s going to be nearly doubling in both situations,” Jamie Maughan, an environmental analysis lead with the Federal Railroad Administration, said.

California is already building an 800-mile high-speed rail system. But that project has been bogged down with hometown feuds, lawsuits and political battles. Private investments involved with the Texas line could avoid the bureaucratic hurdles tied to public funds. And Texas’ rural and relatively flat terrain is easy to build on.

“We believe that high-speed rail is the biggest game changer in transportation since the federal highway system was established,” Hill said.

Ok, it's an interesting concept but again, if you build it, will people use it?

I recently read Nuts, a book written by the founders of Southwest Airlines. One of the points they made was they were not in competition with the big airlines, they were in competition with bus services and cars. We could let you fly from Dallas to Houston at 700am, have your meeting at 900am, get you back on the plane by 1100am and be back in Dallas for lunch. That is an issue now because in flying from those two cities you spend more time getting molested by TSA than you spend in the air. So again, we go back to high speed rail.

The distance from Houston to Dallas is around 240 miles. Assume you average 70 mph on I-45, that is around 3.5 hours. The planners state you will be riding the train for 90 minutes from one end to another. But does that factor in when TSA comes in and starts to molest your passengers for the privilege of getting on the train. From the New York Times of last year:

T.S.A. Expands Duties Beyond Airport Security

WASHINGTON — As hundreds of commuters emerged from Amtrak and commuter trains at Union Station on a recent morning, an armed squad of men and women dressed in bulletproof vests made their way through the crowds.

The squad was not with the Washington police department or Amtrak’s police force, but was one of the Transportation Security Administration’s Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response squads — VIPR teams for short — assigned to perform random security sweeps to prevent terrorist attacks at transportation hubs across the United States.

“The T.S.A., huh,” said Donald Neubauer of Greenville, Ohio, as he walked past the squad. “I thought they were just at the airports.”

With little fanfare, the agency best known for airport screenings has vastly expanded its reach to sporting events, music festivals, rodeos, highway weigh stations and train terminals. Not everyone is happy.

T.S.A. and local law enforcement officials say the teams are a critical component of the nation’s counterterrorism efforts, but some members of Congress, auditors at the Department of Homeland Security and civil liberties groups are sounding alarms. The teams are also raising hackles among passengers who call them unnecessary and intrusive...

So add on at least another half hour to the travel as you must go through being felt up by a unionized federal work force. Oh, and you will be paying for this. Remember, TSA surcharges on a ticket are not just for airlines. So that will increase the cost.

Now the target of this train appears to be business travelers needing to go to and from the two largest cities in Texas. But if the time required is adding up to the approximately 3.5 hours of drive time, the question again is will they bother. Or put another way, one of Houston's greatest growing suburbs in The Woodlands, approximately 30 miles north of the city. It is becoming a home mecca of many oil and high tech companies because Houston proper is being infested by liberals on the city council who love to manage Fortune 500 companies. If I live there and need to attend a meeting in Dallas at 900am, I can drive south into Houston during the early rush hour (say 45 minutes), get to the rail terminal and be molested by TSA (30 minutes), take the train (90 minutes), get off at a terminal in Dallas, take some form of transportation to get me to my destination (say 30 minutes) and then do the same in reverse. Just over three hours one way. Or I can leave The Woodlands at 500am, be in Dallas around 800am and when my meeting is over, drive straight back. The distance between The Woodlands and Dallas is 210 miles. Just over 3 hours driving.

Again, if this can be built by private funds only, God bless em. Lord knows it will be better handled than the multibillion dollar boondoggle in California. But again, I'm just curious, is there a market for this? If so, great, I wish them the best. But I just don't see it at this time.

Lets Roll!....get rid of the TSA!

One group of bureaucrats I really despise is the Transportation Screwup Agency, aka TSA.  If I want to be grouped by perverts I can get it for free in some of the parks in my patrol district and they stop as many terrorist attacks as the TSA.  Here is a great column in of all places the editorial page of USA Pravda.

Abolish the TSA: Column

This government agency is unpopular and unnecessary.

In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the United States took a number of rapid actions. One was the passage of the Patriot Act...

...There's now some talk about repealing or revising the Patriot Act, and the failure of the Department of Homeland Security to do much good seems pretty widely acknowledged. But it's widely accepted -- even by the Government Accountability Office -- that the TSA's army of unionized federal employees is no better, and perhaps worse, than private screeners.

This should come as no surprise. When, as was the case before 9/11, security screeners were contractors employed by airlines, they had every incentive to do a good job: Airlines don't want their planes hijacked or blown up. And they also had every incentive to be speedy and pleasant: Airlines don't want to irritate their customers, or to make flying an unpleasant experience in general.

Federal employees have no such incentives, and it often shows. If people miss their flights, or just give up on flying because it's too much hassle, the TSA doesn't suffer. Even if bombs or hijackers get through, the most likely consequence isn't a bunch of higher-ups at TSA losing their jobs -- when does anybody in the government get fired for failure these days? -- but rather an increased budget and more staff "to make sure this won't happen again." The incentives don't align.

Most other advanced nations use private screening services, and their security is just fine -- and, according to most accounts, less of a hassle for travelers. Some American airports, from San Francisco to Jackson Hole, are already trying out that approach. Why not take that national?

One reason, of course, is that the TSA's bloated unionized workforce will oppose it. But the TSA is also one of the most unpopular agencies with the public. What's more, as Bruce Schneier notes, it has never caught a terrorist. It's not about security, but about "security theater" designed to give the appearance of security. I think the traveling public has caught on to that, and travelers account for more votes than screeners do.

We wanted to be sure that something like 9/11 could never happen again, but as Brad Todd wrote just a few days after the attacks, that was already made sure of by the passengers' themselves on United Flight 93. As Todd wrote:

Just 109 minutes after a new form of terrorism -- the most deadly yet invented -- came into use, it was rendered, if not obsolete, at least decidedly less effective. Deconstructed, unengineered, thwarted and put into the dust bin of history. By Americans. In 109 minutes. And, in retrospect, they did it in the most American of ways. They used a credit card to rent a fancy cell phone to get information just minutes old, courtesy of the ubiquitous 24-hour news phenomenon. Then they took a vote. When the vote called for sacrifice to protect country and others, there apparently wasn't a shortage of volunteers. Their action was swift. It was decisive. And it was effective.
The 9/11 attacks worked because they caught people -- used to theatrical hijackings that didn't kill anyone -- by surprise. Once Americans figured out this new game, which took, as Todd notes, only 109 minutes, they put an end to it by themselves. The creation of the TSA didn't do any good, and it costs a lot of money, and it does a lot of harm. Put an end to it...

I don't see this happening before 2017, after (I pray) a conservative president and a conservative congress reforms this. God knows the SEIU will not allow Obama to cut his, and their own throats. That is a great was to describe it, "security theater". Do I think rent-a-cops will be great, no. But I know they will not be worse than the TSA and we might as well not pay five times as much.

Let's give the dirty old men and women at the park a government issued pistol….

That will help stop terrorism in our skies.

I'm not much of a fan of the Department of Homeland Security in general and of TSA in particular. I don't question terrorism in the continental United States must be confronted, but prior to 9/11 that was the responsibility of the Department of Justice. In typical government fashion, instead of fixing the problems and limitations of DoJ in combating terrorism, we simply make another cabinet department. And an outgrowth of that spawn is the TSA, Transportation Screwup Administration.

The stories of feeling up old ladies and five year old children make the dirty old men in the parking lot of the neighborhood park turn green with envy. Not that it will stop Middle Eastern males between the age of 17 and 38. We let them slide. All the time while paying these people with weeks of training several times the money the rent-a-cops they replaced so they can steal from travelers and harass people in buses, trains and while driving, all the time giving us less security.

With that as background, we see the latest idiocy from the minds of DC. They wanna give these rent-a-cop wanna-bes pistols. Man, this is too good.

Arming TSA officers hits resistance on the Hill

…(The November first) slaying of a Transportation Security Administration officer at Los Angeles International Airport is fueling calls from union leaders to give some of the agency’s employees guns, handcuffs and the power to make arrests.

But that would be a tough sell for many conservatives in Congress, where some lawmakers until recently were trying to take away TSA agents’ badges.

The fatal shooting of Gerardo Hernandez and the ensuing gunfight at LAX called attention to a long-running debate over the powers of TSA, whose screeners aren’t considered law enforcement officers even though many of them wear badges...

…Both lawmakers and the Obama administration have called for reviewing airport security procedures after the shooting spree. But union officials are already offering a concrete proposal: create a new category of TSA agent in addition to the 45,000 existing screeners. People in the new positions would be law enforcement officers, who could carry handcuffs and firearms as well as make arrests.

Union leaders say the enhanced status would help protect an unfairly demonized workforce, as well as security checkpoints like the one where Friday’s mayhem began.

“We feel a larger and more consistent armed presence in screening areas would be a positive step in improving security for both [security officers] and the flying public,” said J. David Cox, president of the American Federation of Government Employees. “The development of a new class of TSA officers with law enforcement status would be a logical approach to accomplishing this goal.”

On Friday, union officials initially suggested simply giving every agent arrest powers. But they said Monday that that would be only a half-step.

“Just saying you can arrest somebody, how far is that going to get you?” asked AFGE general counsel David Borer. “The focus needs to be on how do we deliver the right amount of security at the checkpoint.”…

Thankfully this stupidity seems to have died but it will be back. As a Texas Peace Officer, I am required to have three months of training to get my license. My agency requires around three months more to get on the street with your firearm. Then there is three months of field training and a membership program afterwards. These morons want to give these idiots this powers without going through a background check like ours, nor the training. Sounds like the wet dream of a moron in the Congress.

I pray a conservative congress and president in the future eliminates this agency from it's critical job of harassing the traveling public. Whenever someone says we can't but the federal budget, here is the greatest example of where to start.

Again, why do we have these morons here again....

Does it really need comment:

Video Shows TSA’s Bizarre New Security Policy

Federal agency tests drinks purchased inside airport

Paul Joseph Watson Infowars.com Monday, September 3, 2012

A video clip shot yesterday at Columbus Ohio Airport illustrates how the Transportation Security Administration has dreamed up a bizarre new way to waste time and taxpayer dollars – by testing drinks purchased by travelers for explosives inside the airport long after they have already passed security.

The footage shows TSA agents walking around a departure lounge asking to test passengers’ drinks for explosive residue with a swab they hold over the liquid.

“Now remember that this is inside the terminal, well beyond the security check and purchased inside the terminal…just people waiting to get on the plane,” writes the You Tube user who uploaded the video.

“My wife and son came back from a coffee shop just around the corner, then we were approached. I asked them what they were doing. One of the TSA ladies said that they were checking for explosive chemicals (as we are drinking them). I said “really – inside the terminal? You have got to be kidding me.” I asked them if they wanted to swab us all. She responded with something like, ‘yes sometimes we need to do that’. I then asked if she wanted a urine sample…nonetheless, the TSA is way out of control,” he adds, joking that the TSA’s next move could be to visit people’s homes before they even leave for the airport (they’re already in the parking lot demanding to search people who aren’t even flying!)...

My friend Darren at RotLC posted on his harassment from the TSA bureaucrats and wondered aloud if this was just a way to force people to buy stuff insdie the security area, where the prices are jacked up. Hey, maybe they have found a way to stimulate sales even more.

Federal Flight Deck Officer Program

A few years ago a pilot out of somewhere in California made quite a stir when he YouTubed the fact he as to go through the abuse of TSA morons but the crew that services the plan (i.e. fills the drinks, cleans it up, etc) just has to scan in at an unmanned gate. One of the points he made was he was the only man authorized to be armed on the plane (other than Federal Air Marshals). He also made the simple point if he was compromised it was "game over", the flight was doomed. Not that logic, common sense or intelligence has ever guided this process.

Last week I was at Heritage.org and found this interesting article on how the B Hussein Obama regime wanted to cut back on the Federal Flight Deck Program. Seeing it is mostly funded by the airlines as opposed to the taxpayers kinda makes since. He is saying "I want your toys, if I can't have them you can take them and leave!"

In all seriousness this was an interesting read. I've cut out some of the background material (still recommend the full article) and here is some of the more interesting stuff on the hostility of the TSA on armed pilots.

Federal Flight Deck Officer program: Planned Disarming a Mistake

...A Pattern of Institutional Hostility

They (the TSA) refused to accept a database we handed to them with 10,000 volunteer pilots on a CD. That could have gotten them started contacting pilots and putting them in the program right away, but they refused to accept it. They also refused to accept a program outline that we developed in concert with the FBI, some agents with the FBI that had designed a cockpit protection program. They completely ignored the fact we had initiated a Professional Standards program for the pilots who would eventually be armed.

They were also hostile to the design of the program itself, and they designed it to discourage participation. They created excessive background checks that were redundant, checks that we had already endured just to become an airline pilot—checks with regard to security, financial, and criminal background checks.

The initial weapon choice was inadequate. we called it the Barney Fife pistol because it was a six-shot revolver. We produced a video that showed them it was inadequate for the job.

We had an enactment of terrorist actors on video that attacked the cockpit, and we were not able to handle them with either the six-shooter or the tasers that they asked us to use. Then we ended up with a more appropriate weapon.

Also, the carriage procedures that they designed were illogical and unsafe. They required us to transport the weapon except when in the cockpit where we could carry it—the difference being that carrying is on-person; transport is in some sort of bag or some other carriage method. No other law enforcement agencies in the world transport their weapons in that fashion.

Conclusion

The Administration’s institutional hostility toward the program continues to this day, as we can see from the Administration’s budget submission for FY 2013. They want to kill the program by cutting the funding in half when the funding should be increased so that we can get more pilots into the program.

We knew when we set out to design this program that we would have to spend the rest of our careers trying to protect it. I’ve been retired for seven years now, and here I am again.

—Lieutenant Colonel Al Aitken (USMC, Ret.), a retired commercial airline pilot and former U.S. Marine Corps test pilot, is Director of the Airline Security Consulting Group.

Not that a pilot or Marine officer would know anything about securing an airline flight. No, we need guys who were last week spotted at the park in a 20 year old van looking at children to pat down old ladies and kids for that.

But there was some good news on this front.

House kills Obama proposal to slash spending on armed airline pilot program

Who says Barack Obama isn’t working to reduce government spending as promised? Why, in March he proposed reducing funding by half for the Federal Flight Deck Officer Program. This is a program that permits commercial airline pilots to keep firearms in the cockpit and to use lethal force to defend against air piracy. The measure would have saved taxpayers $12.5 million, which doesn’t amount to much, but the president also recommended trimming the Federal Air Marshal Service by $36.5 million.

Yesterday, Obama’s proposed cuts were rejected by the House of Representatives, according to a press release from Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman John L. Mica (R-Fla.). The provision to override the cuts was included in the Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act (H.R. 5855), approved last night. Of the Obama cuts, Mica said:

Having armed pilots in the cockpit is an important layer of defense against terrorism, especially given the endless examples of the massive TSA bureaucracy’s other failures. It would be foolish to gut security programs that actually work, like the Federal Flight Deck Officer Program, in which our airline pilots bear much of the training costs and help ensure the cockpit is defended.

Remember, B Hussein Obama will not rest until every passenger is safe in the air....

Hopefully this survives the budget process and then after (Please God please!) Obama is sent back to Chicago we can expand it. Again, if the pilot is compromised the flight and it's passengers are doomed and no amount of TSA morons making handicapped people in wheelchairs strip will stop that. Next if we can delete TSA from the budget we can start making some real progress on bringing the airlines back.

Why do I have a really bad feeling about this....

Last year I posted on how TSA wanted to expand from its current mission of harassing law abiding citizens in the airport. Now they are.

If it has anything with The Congresswoman Shelia Jackson-Lee you know it's not right. Take a look at this.

Big Sis Launches Undercover TSA Spies To Ride Houston Buses
Feds to watch for suspicious activity, pre-crime behavior

A new program in Houston will place undercover TSA agents and police officers on buses whose job it will be to perform bag searches, watch for “suspicious activity” and interrogate passengers in order to ‘curb crime and terrorism’.

Democratic Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee unveiled the program, labeled Bus Safe, during a press conference on Friday. According to a Metropolitan Transit Authority of Houston (METRO) press release, agencies involved in the scheme will, “ride buses, perform random bag checks, and conduct K-9 sweeps, as well as place uniformed and plainclothes officers at Transit Centers and rail platforms to detect, prevent and address latent criminal activity or behavior.”

“While local law enforcement agencies focus on overall safety measures noted above, representatives with the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) will also be on hand, lending their counter-terrorism expertise and support during the exercise,” states the press release.

OK. Several questions on this. One, what are the feds doing interfering with local law enforcement? Two, what counter-terrorism expertise will the TSA be lending? The only people it terrorizes is 80 year olds in wheelchairs and children not out of their diapers.

“If you think you’re going to be a bad actor on buses, get ready. You are going to have a short-lived time frame,” Jackson Lee said during the press conference. The Congresswoman is a staunch advocate of the TSA, having recently chastised the passage of a new law that allows airports to evict TSA agents and replace them with private screeners by claiming it would lead to a new 9/11-style attack...

Yes, she is an advocate. She isn't harassed by the TSA like her constituents are. And it's a source of union voters for the Democratic Party. But they will not do much for any type of security. I have yet to see them stop one terrorist act. If anyone can correct me, please do.

...TSA agents are now being used to literally occupy America with an expansion of the 9,000 plus checkpoints that were already operational last year. 12 more TSA VIPR teams (Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response) will be added to the 25 who are already present at transportation hubs throughout the country...

Gee, that makes me feel better. TSA, the group of paid perverts was supposedly established to secure our air travel. But now they are into local bus service, interstate travel, and will soon be at a Greyhound and AMTRAK station near you. Won't make travel any more safe or put fear in any criminal’s heart but man a bureaucrat or two will say "look at me, I'm making a difference." What a waste. I hate saying this but I'm praying a President Romney has the guts to stop in its steps. God help us!