Longer Lines At Airports? Thank Bush And The Republicans!

The Republican-controlled House and Senate are getting ready to cut up to 15% of the entire country's checkpoint screeners at airports. The Senate wants to cut 6000 of the 45,000 screeners; the House wants to cut 2000. USA Today details which airports are hit hardest with cuts. (Some, in fact, gain). Among the big losers: Detroit (black people), Puerto Rico (dark-skinned people and Ricky Martin) and JFK in New York (lots of liberals and besides, it's in Queens and that makes them feel icky). Among the big winners: Arnuhld's Los Angeles, Houston (naturally) and -- no surprise here -- Washington-Dulles. Shameless.

Airport officials say travelers can forget about breezing through in ten minutes -- which should be great for the beleaguered airline industry. But forget convenience -- how can this POSSIBLY be a good idea in a post 9-11 world where security should be a top priority?

Has Bush done ANYTHING lately to improve national security? Bush won't even pretend to worry about oil consumption, Bush doesn't guard our borders, Bush ignores the backlog of untranslated intelligence, Bush wants to DELAY upgrading the Coast Guard (which is charged with inspecting ports) until 2030, Bush can't even upgrade the computers at the FBI (he's leaving that up to the NEXT President), we STILL don't have a combined terrorist watch list to check against the names of people on airline passenger lists and now Bush wants to cut back on airport security. What else can we add to this list?