Your government is slow, inefficient and stupid. It’s a miracle it ever manages to get anything done.

I like it that way.

Despite the occasional inconveniences, the natural inefficiency of government slows our approach to tyranny. Here are a few things that slowed down the government in the last few weeks.

• International travelers whose names even vaguely resemble those on a terrorist watch list have to undergo hours of grueling interrogation when they return to the U.S. But even after being cleared, the next time they leave and return, it’s yet another round of interrogation, because although customs officials could determine they’ve previously cleared the person, they don’t have the authority to do so, according to an inspector general’s report (PDF).
• The Federal Bureau of Investigation is slowly developing an intelligence capability — or trying to. The holdup, according to the House intelligence oversight subcommittee, seems to be in the paperwork. They haven’t been able to write down exactly how to develop their intelligence capabilities. But “exceptional individuals overcoming organization and planning shortfalls” give us a “relatively successful” counterterrorism capability.
• The Federal Emergency Management Agency has been stuffing people evacuated from Hurricane Katrina into travel trailers, from where they aren’t allowed to talk to the press. Even if they don’t want to move in, and have somewhere else to live. And despite having many people who, inexplicably, do want to move in to these trailers, hundreds of them sit empty, and the people who want to move in can’t.
• And last but not least, my favorite must be the brief memoirs of a former airline security screener, who tells of how it was in the days before the Department of Homeland Security. From his description of management preferring bureaucracy to security, it would appear the only thing that’s changed is who signs the paychecks. (Hat tip)