What we have all suspected....

That Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab could get aboard a US-bound airplane with an explosive device last week is hardly a surprise. Most of us who travel have long since come to the conclusion that airport security is an expensive exercise in bolstering public confidence, not an effective deterrent to serious terrorists.

But perhaps it was a bit of a surprise that some nine years after 9/11, the various government intelligence agencies, supposedly welded together under the "Homeland Security" department into a single efficient system, are still obviously dysfunctional, inefficient, and highly error-prone. The revelation that the British had him on a no-visa list, and even his father had alerted American authorities in Nigeria last month about his son's strange behavior, but still the American intelligence system couldn't respond to the warnings, is a worrying sign.

It seems to me yet one more symptom of a government more concerned with appearances than with substance (just as with the health bill, for example).