Where Would YOU Put Security Funds?

Very very quietly, in the dark of night, as it were, the Bush administration has been trying to divert $6 million marked for explosives detection technology. Not sure where they wanted to put it, maybe to protect that petting zoo in Indiana that's on Homeland Security's potential targets list.

But in the meantime, how hard has the Bush administration / Homeland Security been working to keep us safe from plots like this recent one? Not very hard at all, it seems. Homeland Security has failed to spend $200 million in R&D money, they've baled at testing new liquid explosives detonators. According to a recent AP story:

"Homeland Security's research arm, called the Sciences & Technology Directorate, is a "rudderless ship without a clear way to get back on course," Republican and Democratic senators on the Appropriations Committee declared recently. "The committee is extremely disappointed with the manner in which S&T is being managed within the Department of Homeland Security," the panel wrote June 29 in a bipartisan report accompanying the agency's 2007 budget.

Rep. Martin Sabo, D-Minn., who joined Republicans to block the administration's recent diversion of explosives detection money, said research and development is crucial to thwarting future attacks and there is bipartisan agreement that Homeland Security has fallen short. "They clearly have been given lots of resources that they haven't been using," Sabo said.

Rep. Peter DeFazio of Oregon, a senior Democrat on the Homeland Security Committee, said he urged the administration three years ago to buy electron scanners, like the ones used at London's airport to detect plastics that might be hidden beneath passenger clothes.

"It's been an ongoing frustration about their resistance to purchase off-the-shelf, state-of-the-art equipment that can meet these threats," he said.