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I don't know what the President has to do with this

John Magaw is the undersecretary for transportation security, which is an executive branch department.

The Office of Homeland Security was created by Bush, and its director, Tom Ridge was appointed by Bush.

Nominating and retaining people with such policies was either done purposely or is an act of sheer negligence and extremely poor judgement.

In both cases, Bush could and should tell both these individuals to change their policy or submit their resignation. This is a matter of the highest national importance, and the President should assert his authority in the matter.

Let's be candid: This decision came from the administration. Since it's an unpopular and unreasonable decision, Bush has his lowers give the announcement and they are supposed to catch all the heat, insulating the President from political backlash and preserving his ratings in the polls. We're not little kids here, and I'm not fooled for a moment by these shenanigans. I know full well who is responsible for this outrageous decision.

I agree and I said, "he should have made it clear to Norm Mineta, who should have pushed for arming of the pilots."

That he isn't pushing for the pilots to be armed is disconcerting to me, personally. I really think that he missed an easy opportunity to paint the demoPUKEs as not wanting Americans protected.

He should have supported the idea/bill. Naturally, the demoPUNKs would have violently opposed it and he could have simply said, "I just want to protect the American people. Don't you?"

So, I am not supporting the fact that the President didn't support this. Rather, I was commenting on the political calculus that has been done. This, in and of itself, is diconcerting because he have been told that the President doesn't make policy based on polls. He may rely on the polls less than his predecessor, who could take a cr*p without taking a poll, but he (or Rove) is using them. WAY TOO much, in my opinion.

One last point, we trust pilots to be able to land a 500,000 pound aircraft on a stip of land about 4500 feet long, but we don't trust them to be able to snap off a few caps into some terrorist's a$$? Huh? With the hand-to-eye coordination it takes to do this, I would think they would be a crack shot and could find center mass fairly easily.