The TSA really is the Pitts

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune is reporting that Sonia Pitt, the thoroughly incompetent (and some say criminally negligent) emergency response director for the state of Minnesota who was AWOL for almost two entire weeks after the Interstate 35W bridge collapse there last year, is now working at TSA headquarters in Washington as, laughably, a "transportation security specialist".

For those in other areas that didn't hear about Ms. Pitt's (mis)adventures while working for the Minnesota Department of Transportation, she was canned for not only not showing up to the very type of disaster that was her duty to manage, but also for taking unapproved and unnecessary business trips, charging the state for thousands of dollars in personal expenses, using her state-provided cell phone for excessive personal calls and being an overall "belligerent, aggressive employee", according to Legislative Auditor Jim Nobles, who had the unfortunate task of digging up all of the muck on Pitt.

"Pitt's letter of discharge states she engaged in activities that violated MnDOT's ethics code and was involved in 'activities that cannot withstand public scrutiny without embarrassment. ... do not safeguard the public trust in the integrity of MnDOT, and undermine public trust in the Department.'"

She's apparently precisely the kind of competent, ethical person that the TSA needs in order to protect us all from terrorism on public transportation. I feel safer already about my flight tomorrow.

Kip Hawley, the head of the TSA, really is an idiot for a number of reasons, but allowing his department to spend tax dollars to hire boobs like Pitt for such vitally "important" work as transportation security really has to rank in the very top.