I don't know whether to laugh or cry ...

[unixronin]

Your tax dollars doing crystal meth in the bathroom:  The Department of Homeland Security's Red Cell teams have determined, at great expense, that pressure cookers are a threat to national security.  (Sorry for the PDF.)

Yeah, you heard me right.  PRESSURE COOKERS.  Because you can put explosives in them.

What inane silliness will they come up with next?

OH MY GOD!!!!!!   CLOTHES ARE A DEADLY THREAT TO NATIONAL SECURITY!!!!11!   EVERY KNOWN SUICIDE BOMBER HAS BEEN WEARING CLOTHES!!!!   THE 9/11 HIJACKERS WORE CLOTHES!!!!!   SQUEAKY FROMME HAD CLOTHES ON!!!!!   FIDEL CASTRO WEARS CLOTHES!!!!!   HUGO CHAVEZ WEARS CLOTHES, THAT PROVES HE'S A TERRAHIST!!!1!1!1!

...

OK, that's quite enough.  This nonsense can stop now.  The Department of Homeland Security calls this "imagination" and "thinking out of the box."  I call it "paranoid ravings at taxpayer expense" and "complete idiocy."  And the 2005 DHS Appropriations bill contains almost $19 million for this nonsense.

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(Crossposted to neph_politics)

Comments

[midiamin.livejournal.com]

Part of my reaction was just that, hell, it sounds so damn LUDICROUS on the face of it.

Sure it does. But sometimes we have to look past the surface before deciding whether something is worthy of mockery.

I still tend to think, though, that a bomb case made from iron sewer pipe would be a lot nastier

Perhaps, but being less dangerous than a pipe bomb doesn't mean it's not dangerous, as you elaborate.

and quite likely easier to obtain than one of those ancient clamp-top cookers.

Depends on where you are, what's handy, your goals, yadda yadda yadda... The point is that it's an option, it's out there and folks in the field should be aware of it in case they run across it.