Drawing much-needed attention to one of the most underreported stories of 2004 (number 6 on my list), former homeland security inspector general Clark Kent Ervin, (no joke, that's his real name) details the many ways in which "security gaps in the country that have yet to be closed."

According to Ervin, airport security isn't tight enough, little has been done to safeguard other forms of mass transit, the ports remain vulnerable to terrorists trying to smuggle weapons into the country, and immigration and customs investigators are hampered in their efforts to track down illegal immigrants because they often lack gas money for their cars. (Much of this has been previously reported by Matthew Brzezinski.)

But Ervin goes further. During his tenure and since his dismissal, Ervin has described how "Homeland Security officials have wasted millions of dollars because of "chaotic and disorganized" accounting practices, lavish spending on social occasions and employee bonuses and a failure to require competitive bidding for some projects."

But in 2004, mainstream media coverage of the Department's failures was almost nonexistent, delegated to such ideological left leaning publications as Mother Jones or Columbia Journalism Review. Even in the midst of the Bernard Kerik scandal, more attention was paid to Kerik's sex life than to the Department's effectiveness. At some point, infotainment has to supercede entertainment; especially in matters of (literal) life or death.

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