Madame Secretary, resign...

I join Andrew Sullivan in calling upon secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano to resign over the attempted bombing of an airliner on Christmas Day.

There is ample evidence the government knew quit a bit about the bomber long before he boarded the plane but did little to stop him.

Someone needs to loose their job over this. There is no reason a man with such strong links to AQ, who was already banned from entering Britain, has any business coming into the U.S. under any circumstances. It may not be entirely Napolitano's fault, after all, I'm sure she was just following procedures that were put in place 8 or more years ago, but the buck stops at the top, and that is why the president should send an unambiguous message to his cabinet secretaries and all public managers in the employee of the Federal Government: incompetence will have consequences. Security lapses of this magnitude will end careers, both political and civil service, because George "heckuva job Brownie" Bush is no longer president. Remember, this attack follows the shooting at Fort Hood, another incident where clear warning signs were ignored.

At the same time, I'd also like to endorse Tom Friedman's idea to reduce the reward for Osama Bin Laden - to one penny, because I think Friedman was making sense when he wrote:

All we are doing is feeding their egos, and telling them how incredibly important they are, when we not only put a $25 million bounty on their heads, but in the case of bin Laden, double the figure. We are just enhancing their status on the Arab street as the Muslim warriors standing up to America, and only encouraging other megalomaniacs out there who might have similar fantasies to follow suit. We should be doing just the opposite - letting these two losers know that we don't think they are worth more than a penny or a pistachio.

This latest incident just confirms what I've believed for a long time - the Varsity team played for the first and last time on 9/11. Since then, Bin Laden has been reaching deeper and deeper into the bench for players, and the results have less and less spectacular, culminating in last Friday's lame attempted bombing that went off like something out of Jihad for Dummies.

So mister president, two things; fire JN and drop the reward on Bin Laden to, oh, I don't know, how about an Ipod filled with pictures of you golfing and playing with your dog?