That boy is such a cut-up

Terror has a new name: Nathaniel Heatwole.\nThe post-modern Osama's boasting about compromising airport security doesn't impress the Transportation Security Administration, whose flaws are now exposed. Heatwole smuggled box-cutters, bleach and other prohibited items onto a Southwest Airlines flight, left them there in plastic baggies and then told the TSA what he did via e-mail (AP Oct. 21). The objects were found a month later (a month later!).\nTom Ridge, head of Homeland Security, acknowledged the incident as an indication that the TSA still has a lot of work to do in order to ensure airport security and that Heatwole is not an imminent threat.\nSo why is there still talk that he may be charged and could face up to 10 years in prison?\nHeatwole's civil disobedience should be applauded. As much as people don't like to admit it, our security system is still deeply flawed and needs more attention. It's people like Heatwole that prevent future disasters from happening because of their "disobedient" actions. The naysayers can cry all they want, but Heatwole may have indirectly spared thousands of human lives. \nBut can security do any better?\nIt's been over two years since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, yet here we are grumbling about a college student smuggling trinkets on airplanes. There have been millions of dollars pumped into the Homeland Security Administration (a title that lends itself more to a Ralph Fiennes romantic, historical melodrama than it does to our collective safety), and yet the only concrete action we've seen from it is a paint-by-numbers warning system that alerts us if we are possibly in danger. All the while, our airports are busy making us remove our shoes and belts, never seeing Joe Passenger sneak a corkscrew through security for yucks.\nIt's time for Homeland Security to do its job and fess up. We hate to conjure up the excuse of "our tax dollars" but we have to. We're paying for celebrity bodyguards, yet we're getting concert security.\nHeatwole's actions expose the system for what it is: a joke. If he can smuggle in some box-cutters, then who is to say that an evil mastermind won't be able to do the same thing as well when the time is right?\nThere really is only one sure thing when it comes to safety in America's airports. Perhaps if Nathaniel Heatwole was named Nathaniel Mohammed, he would have never gotten through airport security in the first place.