In coutries where terrorism happens more often, it's not the airline industry or any other privatized group that is trusted with airline security. Guess who it is? Don't think on it too long.

The horror of it is that if someone wanted to do an act of terrorism, they could do it. There are too many people in the mix to keep terrorists from succeeding in bringing down an airliner. If they want to do it, it will happen. No matter who is in charge of security. At least when it is federalized they will likely get better wages and benefits which usually brings out a higher-level of recruiting. When you're sharing the same job pool as McDonald's and most of the time LOSING to them it's not what I like to call a "good thing".

Admittedly, the FAA had horrible security testing guidelines prior to 9-11. If they were going to test airport security they had specific guidelines as to how the fake bomb was supposed to look. They would also alert the airport security company ahead of time that they were coming through. Apparently we did not have the same kind of working relationship with Al Quida.

If you want to suggest that racial profiling is the way to go, then let's examine a few things here:

On April 19, 1995, at around 9:03am, the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, OK had half of itself blown sky high in the now second largest act of domestic terrorism by:

a) dead horses
b) cougars trying to find dead horses
c) Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40.
d) angry redneck honkey's mostly between the ages of 17 and 45.

Can't forget that one. I remember a lot of people assuming that this was the act of foreign terrorists when it first happened, and when it was disclosed that these were our own boys it really hit home.

Another thing...what does a "Muslim male extremist" look like, anyway? Do you really feel like you know? Heck, the events from last week show that they don't even have to be male. Whatever the case, go take this FBI test and see how well you score. Sure, it's parody. But it goes farther than that, I think.