Lead Story
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Are We Safe Yet? In March the U.S. Government Accountability Office reported that 47 out of 58 times last year that people on FBI watch lists of known or suspected members of terrorist groups applied to buy or carry a gun, FBI or state officials approved the application. Though there are a number of automatic disqualifications for obtaining a gun license–being an illegal alien, being “mentally defective”–being a suspected terrorist isn’t one of them. And in a February audit the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general found that the department had taken grant money intended to improve security only at critically strategic seaports and distributed it as widely as possible, often to ports that didn’t meet eligibility requirements. Rather than focus on the ten ports through which more than 75 percent of all international commerce enters the U.S.–mostly in New York, California, and Washington–the department shared the wealth with ports in Martha’s Vineyard; Ludington, Michigan; and Saint Croix, Virgin Islands.
South Florida’s Sun-Sentinel reported in April that although Florida medical examiners set the state’s 2004 hurricane-related death toll at 123, the Federal Emergency Management Agency paid out $1.27 million for 315 hurricane-related funerals. Also in April, a scheduled election for five town offices in Monticello, Wisconsin, never took place; “We forgot,” town clerk Walt Weber told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. (Weber said that all five incumbents, including himself, were unopposed for reelection but admitted, “It wouldn’t break my heart if somebody else took the job.”)
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