So many topics, so little time…

Ralph Nader has called for Bush and Cheney to resign; a motorist in Georgia is fined $100 for displaying a political bumpersticker which included the noun, "Bus***"; the Pentagon has dropped its legal resistance to releasing even more Abu Ghraib photos that show us what what Bush really thinks of the Anti-Torture Law; 260 poobahs have signed up to plead for mercy on behalf of Abramoff - for his good deeds, all four of them; Tom DeLay criticizes Justices Ginsberg and O'Connor - says, "They don't get it…"; and, Ambassador Khalilzad told Shiites that President Bush, who understands democratic elections, "doesn't want, doesn't support, doesn't accept" Jaafari, the acting prime minister, as a viable candidate for the office in the new Iraqi government - presumably Bush won't rig the election for him.

But immigration is the hot topic of the day, so I'll pile on, too. While you guys duel those Mexican street demonstrators with your little Taiwanese-made American flagstaffs, I'll just keep my eye on Congress - they're either going to do the right thing or they aren't. I think the time for discussion has long passed. monk

I'd rather examine a different facet of immigration - one that doesn't involve dueling flags - it involves bomb-making material!.

How can Bush's policies still have our borders leaking like sieves after four and a half years of chest-thumping about being tough on terrorists and protecting Americans? Illegal Mexicans, whether trekking the desert or riding in the coyote's semi's, are one thing but when the GAO can smuggle in - through a port of entry, no less - enough radioactive material to make two dirty WMDs, my focus shifts!

Homeland Security? AZ Moderate has written about the problems with containers arriving from overseas - major problemo. However, because the installation of radiation detectors is so far behind schedule, many border crossing points, in addition to the seaports, still have no detection equipment.  The GAO experience even raises questions about the ones that do! 

In GAO's test cases, undercover investigators bought small amounts of radioactive material, then on Dec. 15, they drove across the border at undisclosed locations from Canada and Mexico, intentionally picking spots where the detection equipment had been installed. The alarms went off! The investigators were pulled aside for questioning.

They showed the Customs and Border Protection agents forged import licenses from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission copied from an image of the real thing downloaded from the Internet. The GAO investigators were waved through!

About 670 of the planned 3,034 radiation detection monitors are in place and, at the rate they are being installed - 22 a month on average last year - Homeland Security ain't gonna make the mandated September 2009 deadline.

Now, if the border stations equipped with radiation detectors can be compromised in a sting, what's to prevent the bad guys from just pushing lead wheelbarrows across the desert somewhere between Brownsville to Tijuana?