Should Airline Security Be Privatized?

Or rather re-privatized—as the Cato Institute’s Chris Edwards reminds us, the TSA has only been around for about a decade (it was created in response to September 11th).  Read all about it: “Privatizing the Transportation Security Administration” (full policy analysis here in PDF form).

Excerpt:

After more than a decade of experience, it is clear that the creation of TSA and the federal takeover of airport screening was a mistake. Auditors have found that TSA’s screening performance has been no better, and possibly worse, than private screening. And TSA has become known for mismanagement, dubious investments, and security failures. Former TSA chief Kip Hawley noted last year that the agency is “hopelessly bureaucratic.” And recent congressional reports have blasted TSA for “costly, counter intuitive, and poorly executed” plans and for having an “enormous, inflexible and distracted bureaucracy.”

When Violence against Women Is Politically Correct

While doing research for work, I ran into this, a compilation of empirical and other information tending to support the position that “placing women in physically demanding jobs in the military, as for example combat,” is unwise.  A couple of typical examples:

“Using the standard Army Physical Fitness Test, [an Army researcher] found that the upper quintile of women at West point achieved scores on the test equivalent to the bottom quintile of men.”

Quick Thought: Double Standard?

President Obama finally gave a speech last night about his military action in Libya—what, ten days after American military operations started?  If I remember correctly, we had to have the national debate about whether to begin the second Iraq War (which, unlike this, was arguably just a continuation and finishing of the first one) for at least the better part of a year, and liberals still decried the “rush” to war.  I hope liberals will judge President Obama by the same standard.

Update (March 29th, 2011): Victor Davis Hanson at National Review Online notes,

There was no mention of the Congress. Is he going to ever ask its approval? And if not, why the repeated emphasis on asking others such as the Arab League or the UN for their approval — given that their representatives, unlike ours, are largely not elected?

Yes, come to think of it, President Bush also had Congress’s authorization for the use of force.