Another Day, Another Failed TSA Nominee

Based on what we personally observed this week at a large airport in the south, there is a lot of room for improvement in the way Transportation Security Administration agents carry out their screening function. But it looks like one of their other problems, finding a new boss, won't be solved anytime soon.

President Obama’s choice to lead the agency that guards United States airports abruptly withdrew his nomination on Friday night amid questions about his work as a defense contractor, the second time the White House has lost a nominee for the critical security post.

Maj. Gen. Robert A. Harding, a retired Army intelligence officer, was selected to take over the Transportation Security Administration, or T.S.A., just two and a half weeks ago, following the withdrawal of Mr. Obama’s first pick under fire.

No third choice was announced, and the back-to-back failed nominations mean that the job is likely to remain unfilled for months to come.

General Harding’s bid came unraveled after reports that his firm collected more federal money than it was entitled to for providing interrogators in Iraq. ..

The president’s first nominee, Erroll G. Southers, a former F.B.I. agent and counterterrorism supervisor for the Los Angeles airport police, withdrew his nomination in January after giving conflicting answers about conducting police background checks on a man his estranged wife was seeing.

Mr. Brown Goes To Washington: There Is A New Sheriff In Town

Congratulations to Scott Brown on his stunning victory in the Massachusetts Special Senate election. The march towards socialism has been stopped in its tracks. And far as homeland security, this is what the Senator-elect said in his acceptance speech:

And let me say this, with respect to those who wish to harm us, I believe that our Constitution and laws exist to protect this nation - they do not grant rights and privileges to enemies in wartime. In dealing with terrorists, our tax dollars should pay for weapons to stop them, not lawyers to defend them.

Immediate fallout of the Brown victory: Obama's flawed nominee to head the Transportation Safety Administration, Erroll Southers, has withdrawn his name from consideration.

TSA Nominee Used Database to Snoop On Wife's Boyfriend

Another day, another Obama administration nominee in trouble:

The White House nominee to lead the Transportation Security Administration gave Congress misleading information about incidents in which he inappropriately accessed a federal database, possibly in violation of privacy laws, documents obtained by The Washington Post show...

[Erroll] Southers, a former FBI agent, has described inconsistencies in his accounts to Congress as "inadvertent" and the result of poor memory of an incident that dates back 20 years. He said in a Nov. 20 letter to key senators obtained by The Post that he had accepted full responsibility long ago for a "grave error in judgment" in accessing confidential criminal records about his then-estranged wife's new boyfriend...

Civil liberties specialists said that the misuse of databases has been common among law enforcement authorities for many years, despite an array of local, state and federal prohibitions intended to protect personal information. Studies have found that police at every level examine records of celebrities, women they have met and political rivals. Some federal authorities have been jailed for selling records to criminals.

Southers also refuses to say whether he favors allowing TSA screeners to unionize. Given the hassles at airport security checkpoints as it is, can you imagine piling crazy union workrules on top of that?

Speaking of security at airports, open borders advocate Janet Napolitano, the Homeland Security secretary, announced a new international airport security initiative:

Senior Homeland Security officials will meet with leaders at major airports in Africa, Asia, Europe, South America and the Middle East in the coming weeks "to review security procedures and technology being used to screen passengers on flights bound for the United States," the department announced this afternoon. Napolitano said she would follow up on those meetings with her own "ministerial level" discussions.