The federalization of airport security will allow for more careful background checks in the long run and for better retention because of better pay. But that is where the advantages end. Terrorists will still find ways to hijack airplanes, and when they do, the article is correct in stating that the federal workers responsible will suffer very little punishment. Also the federal government tends to circle the wagons to any attendant lawsuits.
To go down the road of federalizing airport security will result in curtailed travel and collapse of travel related industries. It would also facilitate national IDs and soon impose a real sense of police state.
It is very hard to smuggle guns and other weapons onto an airplane. The terrorists involved in the 9-11 hijackings had obviously studied and planned how to take over those airplanes. They used seeming innocuous instruments such as box cutters. They used distractive techniques such as killing crewmembers at the rear of a plane to lure pilots into the cabin and allow their accomplices to then enter the cockpit.
They could have been stopped by pilots who had been trained in the use of deadly force with special ammunition such as frangible bullets. Cockpit doors such as the ones Alaska Airlines is now installing and cabin cameras could go along way in alerting pilots to dangerous passengers. These measures have been discussed previously. They could go further requiring cabin flight attendants to be trained in martial arts.
The point is that the airline industry has actually done an admirable job and the events of 9-11 will make them tighten up even more.
It is the Federal workforce that has failed miserably on so many fronts. Just for starters consider the border. For Gephardt and others to malign the American private sector for lax standards is laughable. Gephardt's cherished constituency, the government unions, are more culpable of real damage done and yet to be made manifest. There's no doubt that terrorists have crossed the borders illegally, and that they potentially transported materials, now hidden, that can inflict more damage that those jetliners that were conmmandeered on 9-11.
Ultimately, the goblins will always find a way. The only real solution is to allow trustworthy people to go armed. There's room for argument as to whether this is best accomplished through expanding the Sky Marshall program, by allowing LEOs and CCW holders to carry on board, or by making it part of the "pre-cleared trustworthy passenger" program the airlines want, but there's just no way around that conclusion.