Red Alert for Homeland Security

Of all the passions fear weakens judgment most.
Cardinal de Retz (1613 - 1679), French ecclesiastic and churchman

Tom Ridge, the nation’s first homeland security secretary, announced yesterday that he is resigning after only three years in the new post. The Misanthrope believes that Ridge no longer serves a purpose to the Bush administration. In fact, he failed to deliver what Bush was looking for – Pennsylvania. As former governor of the state, Ridge was counted on to deliver, he didn’t, so now he is gone.

Maybe he never was the right choice for the job. Let’s review:

• He devised the unimaginative color scheme, when all he needed to do was flip the top on a box of Crayola Crayons and we could have be secure in knowing that our color code was as unbreakable to terrorists as the Navajo language was during World War II.

• He used the alerts, six national orange alerts — second highest on the five-color scale, to overshadow Bush’s bad economic news, unnecessary deaths in Iraq, and to step on many of John Kerry's announcements.

• He attempted to replace Dr. Kevorkian with the recommendation that people keep a supply of duct tape and plastic sheeting in their homes to seal off bathrooms in the event of a chemical or biological attack, which would allow them to suffocate, rather than suffer a painful chemical death.

Bush now needs to build credibility anew to raise terrorist alerts and have them taken seriously as he prepares to appoint neo-conservative judges, destroys Social Security, and plunges the country into a debt that may never be reversed.