This is off topic, but you mentioned arming pilots.
UNDERMINING THE PROGRAM Unfortunately, despite Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge recently voicing public support for arming pilots, the TSA has fought the program at every turn. After two years since the first attacks and two laws passed overwhelmingly by Congress to start training pilots, only about 200 out of over 100,000 commercial passenger pilots are licensed to carry guns.
Following what seemed like a successful first class of pilots this spring, the TSA fired the head of the firearms training academy, Willie Ellison, for "unacceptable performance and conduct."
Ellison, who won the praise of the students, was reprimanded for holding a graduation dinner for the first graduation class and giving them baseball caps with the program logo.
The training facility was closed down and relocated immediately after the first class, prompting Oregon Representative Peter DeFazio, the ranking Democrat on the Aviation Subcommittee, to complain that the closing appeared to be "just another attempt to disrupt the program."
On top of all the delays, the administration has done what it can to discourage pilots from even applying for the armed-pilot program.
The intrusive application form pilots are required to fill out warns them that the information obtained by the Transportation Security Administration is "not limited to [the pilot's] academic, residential, achievement, performance, attendance, disciplinary, employment history, criminal history record information, and financial and credit information."
Nonsense. The news media *claimed* that Bush was against *both* bills that armed pilots, yet President Bush proceeded to sign BOTH of those bills into law.