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Transportation Secretary Norm Mineta announced new guidelines on Wednesday for pilots to report incidents in which laser beams are shone in their cockpits during flight, saying there have been 31 such incidents since December 31. In his announcement in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, Mineta said there is no "credible or specific intelligence that would indicate that these laser incidents are connected to terrorists." He said the incidents seemed to be the work of pranksters.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta said on Monday he was launching a probe of air travel disruptions over the Christmas holiday weekend at US Airways Group Inc. and Delta Air Line Inc.'s regional carrier Comair. "It is important that the Department and the traveling public understand what happened, why it happened, and whether the carriers properly planned for the holiday travel period and responded appropriately to consumer needs in the aftermath," Mineta said in a statement.

Members of Congress are becoming frustrated with bureaucrats who have put roadblocks in the way of a program to arm airline pilots that Congress first authorized months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Three years later, only an estimated 4,000 of the more than 95,000 commercial pilots have participated in the Federal Flight Deck Officer (FFDO) program. But this lack of participation does not indicate a lack of pilot interest, proponents say. They claim the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has intentionally stymied the program. A soon-to-be-released poll from the pro-gun Airline Pilots Security Alliance indicates upwards of 50,000 commercial...

Norman Mineta should have been the first to leave Bush's Cabinet, not one of the few asked to stay! The holiday travel period is a good reminder of just how far we still need to go when it comes to airline security in a post-9/11 world, and although Mineta’s power has been largely usurped by the Department of Homeland Security, it was he who set the mindset for the post-9/11 world. There have been several significant developments in airline security in the last few months. None bode well. First, what was touted as a passenger profiling system was instituted at...

Washington -- Transportation Secretary Norm Mineta, named Thursday to serve in President Bush's second-term Cabinet, vowed to press a controversial plan to overhaul Amtrak financing in order to end "a drain on the budget." Mineta, 73, the former Democratic mayor and House member from San Jose, said in an interview that he would work to win congressional approval for the pending plan to reduce federal spending on the government-subsidized rail system by shifting a greater burden to states served by Amtrak on the East and West coasts. [snip] White House spokesman Scott McClellan on Thursday announced Bush's decision to keep...

Oh my God ... how .. how could this be?

With President Bush in the middle of a shakeup of his Cabinet, speculation has centered on whether Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta -- the former San Jose mayor and congressman, and the lone Democrat in the Cabinet -- will be forced out before a second Bush term. The resignations by six of Bush's 15 Cabinet members over the past two weeks have raised concerns among Mineta's backers that the secretary might be quietly pressured by the White House to step down.

WASHINGTON - Secretary of State Colin Powell, a towering political figure who waged a sometimes lonely fight for internationalist approaches to the fight against terror, announced his resignation Monday as the remaking of President Bush's second-term administration picked up speed. Bush is expected to nominate Condoleezza Rice, his national security adviser, as Powell's replacement Tuesday. Three other Cabinet members disclosed their departures Monday: Education Secretary Rod Paige, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham and Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman. Along with the earlier-announced resignations of Attorney General John Ashcroft and Commerce Secretary Don Evans, the new exodus ensures the Bush administration will have...

...The ferocious partisan dissension that has broken out at home over the war on terror dangerously subtracts from the nation's war-fighting effectiveness. • Partisan warfare at home has given credibility and confidence to America's enemies abroad.... • Partisan disunity has damaged America's alliances.... • Hyper-partisanship has weakened America's own war-fighting strength.... It's essential to acknowledge mistakes and learn from them.... At home, ...Democrats will do everything they can to stop [Bush].... There are, however, some actions that might help President Bush introduce some useful bipartisanship to American foreign policy. • Listen: For months after 9/11, President Bush met once a...

  Left Holding the BagSeptember 16, 2004 The Mineta Mafiosi are alive and well.  Dozens of TSA personnel at airports across the country have been arrested for crimes including: tampering with public records in the first degree; falsifying business records in the first degree; larceny; official misconduct and criminal possession of stolen property.  In plain English, they are pilfering your luggage.  The panty sniffing and cross-dressing charges are pending. Situation normal in Mineta’s Department of Transportation.  If you look like (and actually are) a 90-year-old Caucasian grandmother from Indiana…you will be intimidated, fondled and never called back for a second date.  For...

<p>Security: The recent downing of two Russian jets is a clear warning that terrorists might like a replay of 9-11 in the U.S. Sadly, political correctness may help them.</p> <p>For all the recommendations of a 9-11 commission formed to answer the question, "How was it that 19 young Middle Eastern males were able to hijack four airliners and use them to kill 3,000 innocents in an hour?" it seems we've learned nothing.</p>

FEW government offi cials have invited more scorn than Transportation Secretary Norm Mineta. It's long past time for the Bush administration to send him out to pasture. And it is time for America to purge itself of the addled, anti-profiling mindset of Mineta. He has turned his personal World War II experience into an excuse to do nothing to fight our enemies today.

The last thing this country needs is another terror attack from the sky. But that's apparently what the terrorists still have in mind, if recent reports are any indication. "Flight crews and air marshals say Middle Eastern men are staking out airports, probing security measures and conducting test runs aboard airplanes for a terrorist attack," Audrey Hudson wrote yesterday in this paper. This, along with a troubling account of 14 Middle Eastern men behaving strangely on a flight from Detroit to Los Angeles, written by Annie Jacobsen, a writer for Women's Wall Street, paints a picture of a troubled...

A WWS Exclusive Article Note from the Editors: You are about to read an account of what happened during a domestic flight that one of our writers, Annie Jacobsen, took from Detroit to Los Angeles. The WWS Editorial Team debated long and hard about how to handle this information and ultimately we decided it was something that should be shared. What does it have to do with finances? Nothing, and everything. Here is Annie's story. On June 29, 2004, at 12:28 p.m., I flew on Northwest Airlines flight #327 from Detroit to Los Angeles with my husband and our young...

his is a WorldNetDaily printer-friendly version of the article which follows. To view this item online, visit http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=39380 Monday, July 12, 2004 HOMELAND INSECURITY Border Patrol in alien 'hell' Despite new anti-terrorism demands, DHS freezes payrolls, frees illegals Posted: July 12, 2004 1:00 a.m. Eastern By Paul Sperry © 2004 WorldNetDaily.com WASHINGTON – Despite increased anti-terror demands, immigration inspectors guarding the nation's borders are laboring under an internal budget crisis that has forced freezes on overtime pay and new hiring – as well as the release of hundreds of illegal immigrants from detention centers. The funding crisis, which some lawmakers...

In June 2001, as Mohammed Atta completed his final "to do" list before the 9/11 attacks -- " . . . *amend will to ban women from my funeral . . . *leave extra little Friskies out for Mr. Buttons . . . *set TiVo for Streisand on 'Inside the Actors' Studio' . . . " -- Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta was conducting a major study on whether airport security was improperly screening passengers based on ethnicity. As Mineta explained: "We must protect the civil rights of airline passengers." Protecting airline passengers from sudden death has never made it...

TRANSPORTATION SECRETARY MINETA ANNOUNCES NEW PLANS TO REDUCE SUMMER FLIGHT DELAYS; TARGETS MOST HEAVILY CONGESTED ROUTES HERNDON, VA – During a visit to the Federal Aviation Administration’s Air Traffic Control System Command Center, U. S. Secretary of Transportation Norman Y. Mineta today announced a series of new steps aimed at reducing potential gridlock and delays during this year’s upcoming peak travel period, including the creation of new air traffic “express lanes,” within many of our nation’s most heavily congested routes. “As the economy improves and passengers return to our skies, the federal government is acting to reduce the kind...

DALLAS, March 1 (Reuters) - The U.S. Department of Transportation said on Monday it has reached a settlement with American Airlines over claims the world largest's carrier discriminated against passengers it thought were of Middle Eastern or South Asian descent. The Transportation Department said in the period immediately following the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, American, a division of AMR Corp. (nyse: AMR - news - people), was accused of unlawfully removing passengers from flights or denying boarding based on race, nationality or religion. "The settlement order finds that American acted in a manner inconsistent with federal...

<p>Pilots already trained to carry guns and operate sophisticated weapons systems are among 100 applicants rejected from a federal program to arm flight-deck officers to protect aircraft from terrorist attacks.</p> <p>Former police officers, firearms instructors and military pilots have filed written complaints with the Federal Flight Deck Officers (FFDO) program questioning its psychological- and background-test system, as well as its generic rejection letter that doesn't explain an applicant's purported shortcomings.</p>

Two years after the anthrax letter attacks, senior administration officials say they have fresh concerns about the nation's vulnerability to terrorist attacks with the deadly germ. The officials said their fears had intensified in part because they now recognized that anthrax spores could be more widely dispersed than previously believed. In addition, they said, terror suspects with ties to Al Qaeda have told questioners that the group has been trying to obtain anthrax for use in attacks. One indication of concern was a secret cabinet-level "tabletop" exercise conducted last month that simulated the simultaneous release of anthrax in different types...