U.K. Security Theater Lays an Egg

The Register:

When it comes to wasting police time, the biggest offenders appear to be...the police.  That, at least, appears to be the conclusion of the Home Office.  Its official statistics, published today, show that while police stopped over 100,000 individuals last year to “prevent acts of terrorism,” there was not a single arrest for a terror offence as a result of these stops.

In the comments, readers wonder how many photographers the police picked up.

RELATED:

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What it’s about

Mark Steyn, on why voting out Democrats is only the beginning:

Where do you go to vote out the CPSC? Or OSHA? Or the EPA?
 
Or any of the rest of the acronyms uncountable drowning America in alphabet soup. “We the people” has degenerated into “We the regulators, we the bureaucrats, we the permit-issuers”.  “Ignorantia juris non excusat” is one of the oldest concepts of civilized society.  But today we’re all ignorant of the law, from the legislators who pass the laws unread to li’l ol’ you on the receiving end.  How can you not be?  Under the hyper-regulatory state, any one of us is in breach of dozens of laws at any one time without being aware of it.

Related:  “So, where do I go vote... for whoever's gonna fire you?”

Also:
Megan McArdle (via Insty):

...more and more of the elites [are] drawn from a narrow class of extremely well-educated people from a handful of metropolitan areas, few of whom have ever, say, been responsible for a profit and loss statement, or tried to bring a gas station into compliance with local and federal EPA regulations.

Yep.

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Fisk of the day - October 27, 2010

Richard Cohen:

As I recall, the original Tea Party was open to anyone. All you needed for admittance was anger.

J.S. Bridges:

There was one other requirement - you needed to be a patriot, too…

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Well, we’ve had 36 more years of experience...

Public Optimism in U.S. System of Government Hits a 36-year Low.

(via Insty)

RELATED, later (101028):

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Here come the RINOs!

The Wall Street Journal:

Republicans are bashing the president and his agenda, and some are vowing to shut down Washington if they don’t get their way.  Behind the scenes, key party members are talking a different game.

A number of House Republicans, including some who are likely to be in the leadership, are pushing a post-election strategy aimed at securing concrete legislation, even at the potential cost of compromising with Democrats.
...
“It’s pretty clear the American people expect us to use the existing gridlock to create compromise and advance their agenda,” said Rep. Darrell Issa (R., Calif.).  “They want us to come together [with the administration] after we agree to disagree.”

Because “more of the same, only slower” is exactly what we want from the next congress.

Right.


UPDATE:  Rush Limbaugh locks and loads.
’NOTHER UPDATE (101020):  Nathan has the quote.

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Another inadvertent truth

Representative Nick Rahall (incumbent D-WV), warmingist supporter, gets tangled up in his analogy:

Climate change — to deny it exists, to just put your head in the sand and, ‘oh no, it doesn’t exist, what are you talking about,’ is about like standing on the floor of Macy’s during the month of December and claiming Santa Claus doesn’t exist.

Via Warren, who reminds us that “saying Santa Claus does not exist is absolutely correct, but doing so would get in the way of everyone around us making money off the myth.”

Previous inadvertency.

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The beatings will continue until they get the message.

Bill Quick views the coming election, and the one after:

People aren’t going to the polls because the necessarily want their guy to win.  They are going because they are in a rage to punish the evil, complacent bastards who’ve been raping them all their lives, and finally stand exposed for the lying, malevolent wreckers that they are.

It just so happens that the majority (though not all) of the candidates currently running who fit in that category happen to be Democrats.

Something Republicans might keep in mind for 2012...

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“Recovery” explained, plus administration contempt

Charlie Gasparino, The Daily Beast:

“I know you’re paid to do the president's bidding, but I’m paid to answer to shareholders and a board of directors and your health-care plan is costing me $1.5 billion, your tax increases another $1 billion, and regulation another half a billion.  So I might have to lay off people rather than hire them.” - unnamed CEO, responding to Rahm Emanuel’s “Why aren’t you guys hiring more?”

So much for big business. Then there’s this example of the Obama crowd’s, shall we say, exquisite sensitivity toward businesspeople at the other end of the spectrum:

“Forget about Big Business moving away from us,” said one administration official, “we’re losing the Kiwanis Club guys who own a small business and spend their nights wearing those funny hats.  They’re independents and we need them but all the class warfare stuff seems to have pushed them away.”

Fortunately, the faculty lounges, the media establishment, and the “moocher class” remain firmly behind them.

(It apparently didn’t cross that person’s mind that his mild disparagement^[1] might be taken as an insult?  Says it all, doesn’t it?  “Bitter clingers,” all over again.)

Two weeks...


HT (Beast): Alphecca
-----

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How it works

Veronique de Rugy:

If this were the private sector, those Congressional staffers would end up in jail

Hell, if it were the private sector, those staffers would be invited in for a little “chat” with investigators.  Then instead of any “real” crime, they’d be prosecuted for perjury.  Then they’d end up in jail.

HT:  Insty

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Yeah, they *could* do that...

I’ve omitted a phrase from the following quote.  Care to hazard a guess what it is?

The decades-old technology used to manage the power grid is vulnerable to manipulation or sabotage, according to a study revealed this week.

Attackers could manipulate power-grid data [...] used by grid operators to set prices for electricity and to balance supply and demand, the researchers say. Grid hackers could make millions of dollars at the expense of electricity consumers by influencing electricity markets. They could also make the grid unstable, causing blackouts. - MIT’s Technology Review

If the tone is familiar, perhaps you’re recalling last year’s agitation by supporters of the S.773/S.778 “Cybergrab” bills (still pending) that would massively expand presidential power over “critical information networks” in the name of national “security.”  So here comes another study that’s found network vunerabilities that (of course) must be addressed with federal legislation?

Well, not exactly.  Here’s the phrase that I stripped out:

... by breaking into substations and intercepting communications between substations...

Now I’m all in favor of taking care to transmit sensitive data over secure (isolated) networks using secure protocols, but seriously: If you have “hackers” breaking into to your facilities, you have a far bigger problem than whether you’re using encryption or not.

After all, physical access to the machinery means you can do a lot of things.  Like substituting made-for-tv movies for football games, for instance.


(The article does make the point that increased reliance on remote controls and automation to replace on-site human operators will make data-tampering (and other mischief) harder to detect and less likely to be discovered, but, duh, we already knew that.)

UPDATE, related (101013):

Original link via Insty.

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