At 08:59 PM 8/6/04 -0400, Steve wrote: last year. I'm glad to hear that. But they shouldn't have been on the list to begin with! That's one of my points, airport security is nothing but a show to make the public think the government is actually doing somehting about security. But all too much of it is meaningless and useless measures such as this. Eyeglass screwderivers and nail files have never been a threat to an airliner that I know of! BTW metal toothpicks ARE still on the list of "weapons". Can you tell me exactly how many airliners have been hijacked with a toothpick? ability to make decisions and exceptions on their own. People making thousands of dead people. WRONG! The airport security people did exactly what they were supposed to do according to the rules at that time. The 9/11 commishion found where many mistakes were made, particularly in the intelligence area but to my knowledge they found no procedural errors in what security did. They actually found that some security people were suspious of the hijackers but allowed them to board the planes because they were NOT allowed to use their own judgement and had to follow fixed idiocic rules. running into the side of a building will only give the person a headache. Wait a minute! What's this crap about running into buildings? Why don't you stay on topic? A number of the 9/11 hijackers came over from Canada the day before they hijacked the airliners on 9/11 yet you dismiss border security my merely saying that the borders need to be better protected and then jump to some totally irrelevent rambling about people running into buildings. Our borders should be our first line of defense against terrorism but they're wide open to even the most illiterate Mexican peasant to simply walk across. It's a good thing that Alqueda doesn't wise up and simply walk in 10,000 or so terrorists across the Canadian or Mexican borders. win because there is no sign warning someone of getting hurt if they >do that... code to enter, so just having a badge doesn't help much unless security is already lax at the airport. People are to badge in, enter their code, and then close the door so the next person does the same procedure. That's another thing that found, people letting other people through the doors and in some cases blocking them open and leaving them standing wide open for anybody that came along. In addition, they've found that there are 100s of missing airlines uniforms and a whole hosts of other security problems. They've also found a high number of convicted felons working there because the airports were lax about getting background checks. Like I said, hardly a week goes by with some new revalation about problems at the airports. Miami running badly is an understatement! It's been that way for a LONG time and for some reason they can't seem to straighten it out. Too many airport operators looking to pince pennies, minoritie rights, unions, underpaid employees and other specail interest I suppose but that still doesn't excuse the smoke and mirrors approach to security that the government is using. Inspecting every airline passenger three and four times before he gets on a plane isn't going to do much good when you have drug addicts, ex-criminals and thieves working in the ground crews and wide open access for nearly anyone that wants to get on or to an aircraft while it's sitting on the ground. Joe