corrente

It's always the details that trip the Republicans up.

Madison Square Garden in lock-down mode, trains re-routed from Penn Station to Hoboken (don't ask), police everywhere, helicopters everywhere, bombsniffing dogs—Hey, did any of 'em sniff Zell's speech?—a constant fear rush fed by weird rumors—remember the mice? The hookers? (back), and all that gaslighting (back)....

And how is the actual security at the Convention? Farcically bad! But that's just a detail:

Last night, as President Bush talked in his acceptance speech about fighting terrorism, a young woman with long brown hair began heckling him from 30 yards away in the California delegation.

Minutes later, another woman, in the upper deck of the Garden, was removed from the hall during the president's speech after standing up and revealing that "Give George Bush the pink slip" was written on a pink slip she was wearing.

"I'm shocked by how easy this has been," said Medea Benjamin, 51, an antiwar protester from San Francisco. Ms. Benjamin managed to get within 20 feet of Mr. Cheney on Tuesday night and, during Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's speech, unfurled a banner that read: "Be Pro-life, Stop Killing in Iraq."

"I am shocked by how many passes we can get," she said.

Part of the problem for the Secret Service, which was in charge of security at the Garden, was that thousands of passes were available but there was no system to match a pass with the person it was issued to. The serial number on the credentials could be tracked only to the organization that was responsible for distributing them, which did not help after an incident had taken place.
(via the-always-ready-with-Lizzie's-kneepads-not-the-Los-Angeles Times)

"No system to match a pass with the person it was issued to." Some security system, huh? I mean, isn't "Show some ID" the basic request of security people everywhere?

And the funny thing is... Talking the talk, but not walking the walk, is exactly what the Republicans are doing on Homeland Security.

Take loose nukes, for example (back). We've got orange alerts, lots of political theatre, lots of chest-thumping and strutting and swaggering, but as far as actually securing the ports, so a loose nuke in a shipping container doesn't destroy New York, or Philly, or Los Angeles, or some other (blue) city? Forget it.

In reality, the ports are about as well protected against loose nukes as Madison Square Garden was against protesters: That is, not at all.

Which is not surprising, considering that the same people were in charge of both.