By Mark Mix
Home day care providers would be forced into unions
Independent voices from the TWT Communities

The TSA's program to let agents pick out people for closer screening based on the agents' observation fails to meet basic standards of training of objectivity, according to a report released Wednesday by the agency's auditor.

The head of the Transportation Security Administration says he's dropping a proposal that would have let airline passengers carry small knives, souvenir bats, golf clubs and other sports equipment onto planes.

The TSA's program to let agents pick out people for closer screening based on the agents' observation fails to meet basic standards of training of objectivity, according to a report released Wednesday by the agency's auditor.
Not long ago while walking through the airport, the following announcement caught my attention: "Will the person who forgot their hearing aids please return to the Transportation Security Administration security checkpoint to reclaim them."

Transportation Security Administration agents told congressional lawmakers this week that they've stopped taking images of passengers that are graphic to the near-naked level.

The budget cuts known as sequestration were supposed to wreak havoc, forcing the shrinking of critical workforces including airport security officers and food inspectors. But since sequestration kicked in March 4, the government is in the market for 27,000 new employees.

The number of names in a secret U.S. database of suspected terrorists has swollen to 875,000 from 540,000 only five years ago, in part because of rule changes introduced after al Qaeda's failed underwear bomb plot in 2009.

Security officers at Reagan Washington National Airport stopped a Virginia man from boarding a plane Friday after authorities discovered he was carrying a loaded gun.
A passenger at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport was stopped and cited after an officer found a loaded gun in his carry-on bag at a checkpoint, Transportation Security Administration officials said Tuesday.
The men and women at the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) dedicate themselves every day to preventing attacks against the United States. A recent Commentary piece from Rep. Marsha Blackburn, Tennessee Republican ("Dressing for excess at the TSA," Wednesday), failed to point out that the dollar amount for the contract recently awarded to procure uniforms for transportation security officers is simply a ceiling limit, allowing for the government to spend less money over a longer period of time. Without this contract, TSA would not be able to replace worn-out uniforms or provide uniforms for new employees.

Transportation Security Administration officials responded to Newark inspectors' failure to find bombs planted on security testers this way: We tried, but it's really hard.

Over the past decade, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has become the poster child for everything that's wrong with big government. Since its creation, the agency has had an employment increase of nearly 400 percent, its warehouses are close to capacity with nearly $100 million in screening equipment sitting idle, and it spends more than $17,500 in training costs per new hire yet is unable to consistently conduct criminal and credit background checks on their employees.

An undercover inspector sneaked an improvised explosive device that was stuffed down his pants past two separate TSA security points, ultimately receiving clearance to board a plane.

A senior Republican on the Senate Judiciary committee on Friday called into question the leadership abilities of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, expressing "outrage" at what he called the department's questionable response to sequestration — including the release of detainees from detention centers across the country.

Kudos to the new Transportation Security Administration plan to let passengers carry on small knives, said the former chief of the agency. Now let them carry on machetes, he added.