Then-Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-SD, made a big issue of making sure TSA employees were unionized on a key vote, and that gave the game away. The fans of big government on Capitol Hill had found another of those issues the public strongly supports, which meant cost was no object. In that sort of scenario, politicians are free to load up departments with people who support them and have the public pay their salaries.

Now we have the airlines concerned with safety "protected" by a bureaucracy focused on its own growth and wellbeing. What is happening at the airports should surprise no one. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano informed the public yesterday that it didn't have to use the airlines; we could take some other form of transportation.

That is one description of bureaucrats' Valhalla, a heaven where regulators have fewer and fewer people to regulate, but the same amount of tax money or more to spend on themselves.

All of this could have been avoided by letting the airlines handle security. They had to take over the snow removal desk years ago at O'Hare. This would have put a premium on finding and stopping threats to the system, not frisking grandmothers.

The real issue was not cost for obvious reasons, rather faulty intelligence from the federal government through the FAA. Washington missed the appearance of the boomer despite warnings from an Egyptair crash, along with FBI field agents' worries about Arab students in flight schools, not interesting in learning to land.

Sadly, the lack of response demonstrated typical inertia at headquarters in Washington, which cripples our response to terrorism. The same reluctance to change procedures makes the TSA easy to study and outsmart.