This is simple. You already know this, but Homeland Security is all about getting votes. They make the security measures to board a plane flight inconvenient to show that they are doing something. That's it. Bunkers in the middle of nowhere don't matter, because voters will never see them.

Homeland Security, like any other govt. organization (or large org. in general), is not truly unified. Besides that, they technically had no jurisdiction there. Yet. It was a private firm and I imagine little red lights came on in various Govt. agencies when the theft was discovered. Also, explosives are strangely ubiquitous. Not totally, absolutely so, but they're necessary in enough operations that it is going to be difficult for any agency to track all of them actively, even C-4, much less send inspectors to ensure that proper security precautions are taken. America is HUGE. It's sort of the same way in which they don't always catch on to illegal diverting of drugs, there's too much going on. Even if any large organization was actually a united force, it'd be hard, but with miscommunications, chains-of-communication playing Telephone, obstinate supervisors, obstinate underlings, hirings, firings, office politics, requisition forms, jurisdiction confusion, poorly defined hierarchy, macro-politics, Senate/Congress meddling, and (in the case of Homeland Security anyhow) all the issues that come with being a thrown-together, brand-new organization that everyone is staring intently at, there are going to be problems. It doesn't help that it seems directors and high-ranking people are often put there due to higher-level politics rather than job competency. When the policy-setters don't know what they're doing, they can screw up the whole organization.

I'd imagine a part of why Homeland Security measures focus on airports (besides simply the public resonance) is that they are chokepoints they can (theoretically) do something about. Admittedly, they're doing a shitty, shitty, poorly-thought-out, apparently-unresearched job of it at times, but it might get better. And you have to remember, even if they set up certain protocols, it is often up to the airport to enact them, which means that people that are neither trained nor experienced in this sort of thing suddenly have to set up a whole new method. Prior to this, a few (more or less) harmless hijacks were the biggest issue. Worrisome but not 9-11 worrisome. So you've got a beaurocracy (that doesn't specialize in airport management) setting up general rules that the airport managers (who have normally just done wear-and-tear and drunk passenger troubleshooting with the occasional drug-bust or hobo) setting up new security measures faster than they have time to think. Things have gotten better. The Twin Cities Airports are generally pretty quick. There's still racism involved with the "Random Checks", but since the checks are enacted by essentially blue-collar working men who are as afraid and mislead as anyone else on top of having much more "THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN WE FAIL" drilled into our heads, it's almost understandable. Not acceptable, but understandable.

No guards and not even any security cameras? Man, that stuff was begging to be stolen in that case.

Unfortunately I must answer this post (the contents of which which I am quite disgusted at but not surprised) with something terribly OT.

That is single-handedly the best icon in the world. I know I say that often, but for this five minutes together atleast, its true.

"Dark Side of the Garden"

I wish the shirts weren't sold out.

oh! Threadless! I know this place. *clicks on request a reprint*

*clicks again*