2016

“TSA recommends passengers show up at least 48-hours early for flights,” writes Agent Smith of @TSAgov, a parody Twitter account lampooning the beleaguered Transportation Security Administration. However, when taking a look at the state of security checkpoints at airports across the nation — where recently wait times have stretched for hours, causing tens of thousands of passengers to miss flights — it is hard to see where parody ends, and actual security begins.

It is not as if the TSA has not been afforded ample opportunity to become the security clearinghouse for airports it was designed to be when Congress created the agency following the 9/11 terror attacks; but, 15-years and close to $100 billion dollars later, the agency just cannot get it right.

Frustration with the TSA, coming not just from passengers but from airline operators as well, has risen to an angry boil in the last few weeks as wait times for security have increased at some major airports well beyond the “arrive two hours early” recommendation. American Airlines announced last month that 70,000 of its passengers, and 40,000 checked bags, did not make it on to scheduled flights due to the TSA. “We have never seen TSA wait times that affect airlines and passengers throughout the United States like we have seen in recent months,” an executive from the airline told Congress in her testimony focusing on current travel woes.

The TSA’s response? Blame passengers for carrying more bags and, as expected, ask for more money.

It may be true that external factors such as increased airline travel and more passengers turning to carry-on bags to avoid checked bag fees have put additional strains on TSA resources; but the agency tasked with the very specific job of transportation security seems utterly incapable of adapting to even the simplest (and most obvious) security variables it can and should expect in the course of executing its duties. Much of this problem stems from the mismanagement of the agency that has been festering for years; an issue only recently investigated by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. In talking to numerous employees and officials, the House committee discovered an environment in which whistleblowers lived in fear of retaliation, and key leadership positions were filled with wholly unqualified individuals.

The House committee also noted the agency’s propensity for wasting taxpayer money on boondoggle projects; highlighting that it took nearly $50,000 to create a “randomizer” app for selecting passengers consisting of nothing more than a left or right arrow. Unfortunately, in TSA-world, this is on the low end of waste and abuse of the taxpayer. For example, the TSA spent more than $30-million on security scanners that were eventually removed from airports due to privacy concerns over the revealing images they produced. Furthermore, as I wrote last year, the TSA has dumped nearly a billion dollars into its Screening of Passengers by Observation Techniques (SPOT) program, which performs risk assessment on passengers using a “scorecard” of warnings signs such as “body odor” and “exaggerated yawning” – in spite of the Government Accountability Office recommending the program be defunded due to its absurdly unreliable methods and dubious results.

Yet, as Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson tells us, we should be giving the TSA more money if we want them to do what taxpayers have been paying billions for already. Actually, the opposite should happen.

Congress should abolish the agency and mandate that airports and airlines assume responsibility for security. The role of the federal government should be to set the security criteria to be met by commercial aviation airports; then have the airlines implement the standards; and finally ensure through reporting and monitoring that proper security checks are maintained and updated as needed to meet changed circumstances. Privatizing commercial air travel security will give the airlines and airports the flexibility and means to address changes to the security environment not possible when working under federal bureaucrats whose “solution” to every criticism is “give us more money.”

Only in the federal government is more funding and more power the answer to incompetence and mismanagement. Congress should refuse to play any further role in this security theater, and do what they should have done years ago – privatize the TSA.

A long, long time ago, American presidents set lofty goals for our nation; a country they considered without question to be the most exceptional in the world. Presidents envisioned a young and daring nation expanding westward to uncharted territory; others led efforts to fight real wars and vanquish some of history’s most feared tyrants; and some sent Americans outside the reaches of the sky and onto the surface of the moon.

These milestones in our national history, as well as the once-manifest sense of American exceptionalism, inspired President Ronald Reagan to urge mankind to strive for that “shining city on a hill,” which people around the world and through the years saw as a model for human freedom and achievement. America’s sights were high.

How low our national gaze has fallen. Today, we have a President whose vision for 21st Century America extends no further than a “shining stall in the restroom.”

Rather than build and inspire a nation in the ways that presidents such as John F. Kennedy and Reagan did — reminding citizens of how much we have accomplished, and how much we still can achieve — President Barack Obama has spent his time in office shaming Americans about their past sins and present shortcomings. Now, in the twilight of his eight-year term in office, he has turned his gaze inward with a vengeance.

No longer is Uncle Sam focused on challenges that will inspire new breakthroughs in science, agriculture or educational achievement. He now is transfixed on . . . transgendered bathrooms.

The issue of transgender bathrooms is already embarrassingly questionable as a responsibility for even state and local governments; essentially a solution in search of a problem. And the federal government’s entry into the debate is perhaps the silliest cause célèbre Uncle Sam has ever taken on.

How many “transgendered” people are there impacted by laws such as North Carolina’s HB2; or, even more statistically negligible, incidents in which the bathroom choice of such individuals has required interdiction by the state? And where, in even the most expansive reading of the U.S. Constitution, might one uncover authority for the federal Departments of Justice or Education to demand of a local elementary school, a private business or a county government, that it open restroom stalls to whoever “senses” their gender dictates where they should relieve themselves?

Yet, we now have a President, an Attorney General, and an army of bureaucrats, who have decided they have nothing better to do than set a goal of mandating who can use a particular restroom on any particular day anywhere in America.

America’s Left should be (but is not) outraged that “social justice” buffoons, of which Obama seems to be obsessively focused on pleasing, have again hijacked the Democratic agenda; this time to do nothing more profound than change bathroom signs. However one might read what some liberals are saying about this move by the Obama Administration, you would be forced to conclude that the most important factor in determining whether a “transgendered” student succeeds in life is being able to relieve himself or herself in a particular restroom.

The inordinate attention paid to this particular issue, illustrates perfectly why we are failing to accomplish anything of significance at home or abroad. Our goals as a nation have fallen so low and become so shortsighted, we have settled for leaders with literally no vision beyond the lowest level of human action.

The absurdity of the position the Administration is taking by wading into the “transgendered bathroom” debate has caused it to tie itself in rhetorical knots. For example, as reported in the May 13th Charlotte Observer, the Justice Department “contends that sexual orientation is not a personal decision, but is based on an array of factors affecting an individual’s sense of gender.” What utter, nonsensical gobbledygook. Moreover, the inherent contradiction in this statement – claiming at once that sexual orientation is not a “personal decision” but yet depends on “one’s sense of gender” – obviously is too complex even for America’s top lawyer, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, to recognize.

In essence, what Obama, Lynch, and other high-ranking but low-thinking officials directing federal policy are asserting, is that federal law and our once-esteemed Constitution, now stand for the proposition that each individual can decide — based on nothing more than their “sense of gender” on any particular day — whether to use the men’s or the women’s restroom, secure in the knowledge that the full weight of the government of the United States of America will back them up.

Last month, two men were caught on video climbing over the border wall with Mexico and into the United States, carrying with them two large back packs apparently loaded with illegal drugs. The climbers, who were also caught on government surveillance approaching the wall in Mexico before even setting foot on it, easily scaled down into the U.S. within a few yards of not one, but three U.S. Border Patrol vehicles. The Border Patrol officers, although clearly aware of the illegal fence climbers, did nothing. The men re-scaled the wall back into Mexico only after realizing a media crew was filming their escapade.

Such events appear to be “business as usual” at America’s southern border; reflecting a “hands-off” mentality by federal border agents that dramatically undercuts the federal government’s avowed commitment to stop illegal border crossings. It also lays bare the argument that building a wall along our border with Mexico “secures” the border. Clearly it doesn’t; and it will not until Uncle Sam develops the will to stop illegal border crossings.

The ineptitude on display last month brings to mind another botched “border control” operation by this Administration a few years ago — “Operation Fast and Furious” — in which the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, intentionally allowed firearms to be purchased by known Mexican drug members in the U.S., and then shipped back to Mexico where, in theory, they would be tracked. Due to reasons that can only be attributed — charitably — to bureaucratic incompetence, the guns disappeared; that is, until one showed up at the scene where U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was shot to death.

Tragedies such as Operation Fast and Furious, as well as the Border Patrol’s passive attitude towards stopping flagrant criminal activity, illustrates a problem rooted far deeper than the prima facie absurdity of Obama Administration policies. It reflects a fundamental unwillingness by federal law enforcement agencies to do their job. The question is not are we lacking a high-enough wall, but do we lack the will.

The worsening problems at the border is perhaps the single-most important factor in the rise of Donald Trump as a competitive presidential candidate in 2016. However, though Trump may be the loudestand shrillest voice on border issues, he still, like so many other candidates and office holders, is missing the forest for the trees when it comes to illegal immigration.

Trump and those who share his views on border security focus almost exclusively on the physical aspects of the issue; higher walls, more border patrol agents, and more money. While money, equipment and personnel certainly are important elements of a comprehensive border security program, they are wasted without a true commitment on the part of officials from the President down to agency heads, to actually use those resources to do the job.

The key to “securing the border” lies not in physical security, but in policy security; and without the will to stop illegals from coming in, and until we stop fretting about the risk of “someone getting hurt if our law enforcement officers do their job,” illegals will continue to pour in regardless of the physical obstacles, barriers, and deterrents we place in their way. No number of federal agents assigned to the border, and no amount of blustering from Trump about “growing [the border fence] ten feet higher,” will make a noteworthy difference if we on this side of the wall lack the courage to stop illegals before they ever put their first foot up to climb, or as soon as they touch down on our side.

First, we have to reverse the mixed messages of the Obama Administration to Latin America regarding illegal immigration, and take a strong stand that our borders actually mean something, and that those attempting to enter the country illegally will be sent back, pronto. We must back up this message by ending the absurd “catch and release” programs that kill the morale of Border Patrol agents and continue to demonstrate that we are not serious about stopping illegal immigration. Finally, we must address the economic incentives for illegal immigration by making clear to states and cities that federal funds cannot be used to subsidize pro-illegal immigration agendas of liberal local and state governments. This means Zero Tolerance (and zero federal money) for so-called “Sanctuary Cities.”

To accomplish these things, Republicans must resist the easy route of responding to populist calls for expensive, temporary “fixes,” and focus on the much harder task of reversing Washington’s current attitude towards immigration; replacing it with one that shows we have the courage to protect our borders. In the absence of such a commitment, individuals and government leaders “South of the Border” will continue to laugh at us to our face.

For decades, liberals have forewarned the destruction by conservatives of their Ivory Towers of academia. They whine that conservatives are out to “starve” educational institutions by cutting their bloated, taxpayer-funded budgets; they blame conservative opposition to their precious Common Core scheme as “paranoia,” and they defend teacher unions to the death.

However, it is not the Tea Party, Republican governors, or homeschool families that liberals should fear. The single biggest threat to the ivory bastion that is Big Academia is the students whose very minds liberals have spent decades molding with their meticulously-crafted indoctrination.

Since the 1960s, when liberal activism was characterized by nuclear disarmament peace marches, sit-ins, and anti-Vietnam war protests on campuses from Columbia to Berkeley, liberals have used educational institutions to push their globalist, Big Government agenda into highly impressionable students under the guise of a “liberal arts” education. Today, not much has changed, except for one thing: whereas in recent years it has been primarily administrators and faculty members leading the leftist movements on campus, including cracking down on conservative thought, it is now students who have seized the reins.

What they have wrought is intimidating professors and administrators at major universities from Missouri to Georgia.

Fueled by modern progressivism and cutting-edge technology, today’s students are more militant, and have a far shorter “fuse,” than their professor predecessors. They join only with those who agree totally with their radical agenda and tactics, and demonize everyone else; including the very professors and administrators who once saw these students as their most prized accomplishments. “Things have changed since I started teaching, [t]he vibe is different,” writes a self-described “liberal” college professor, understandably under a pseudonym. “My students sometimes scare me — particularly the liberal ones.”

The latest incident at Emory University, a once-esteemed institution in Atlanta, demonstrates just how unhinged these students have become. When chalk messages supporting GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump appeared on campus sidewalks, rather than ignoring them, or even taking the simple step of using a bottle of water to remove the messages, students organized protests. They quite literally cried out to the Administration that they were “in pain,” and felt “threatened” by the scribbles. The sane response by the Administration would have been to tell the students to “grow up.”

However, in the wake of Missouri University President Tim Wolfe having been pressured to resign last year, after “failing to do enough” to appease student members of the Black Lives Matter social justice movement, it is clear who now has the upper hand; and it is not Emory President James Wagner. Wagner prostrated himself and declared the University would be “taking a number of significant steps” to respond to the Little Darlings in his care. Steps like what — banning college students from possessing chalk, and declaring the campus a Chalk-Free Zone?

Apparently this is what higher education has been reduced to — a four-year incubator for premature adults. Emory’s pathetic response to the Great Chalk Terror underscores how far it has sunk already.

A classical education necessarily requires an environment in which students are forced to study, to learn, and to question ideas and beliefs as a method of teaching them how to “think.” This simply is not possible in an environment where uncomfortable or controversial speech is not only eschewed, but punished.

The darkness at the end of this tunnel will be campuses devoid of independent thought; where the only acceptable speech and behavior is that pre-approved by committees of timorous regents and educators, under the watchful eyes of radical student overseers. It will be a Bizarro World in which students will spend up to $200,000 or more to graduate; knowing much about “gender types”and “white guilt,” but nothing of the genius behind the making of our Constitution or of the rewards of hard work and perseverance that drove Thomas Edison or Albert Einstein.

Should university administrators and state boards of regents fail to regain control of their institutions, state legislators should begin seriously to cut taxpayer funds to public institutions that refuse to fulfill their foundational purpose of actually educating students.

In the meantime – and thankfully — students for whom college is still about challenging ideas, learning to think, and how to create, have at least one defender in their corner. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (“FIRE”), founded by Alan Kors and Harvey Silverglate, actively defends the First Amendment rights of students and faculty on college campuses across the U.S. And, recently, they have been busy.

The defenders of the Constitution at FIRE will be even busier in the wake of the Great Emory Chalk Scare. Already, Chicken Little administrators at the University of Kansas are fretting over how to protect their Little Darlings from a couple of scary Pro-Trump chalk messages that appeared on the sidewalks in their “Safe Space.”