Homeland Security: religion but no security

A NY Times editorial today takes on Michael Chertoff's unbelievably lackadaisical approach to the safety of American chemical plants.

. . . This week, when Mr. Chertoff appeared before executives of the chemical industry, whose plants remain one of the nation's greatest vulnerabilities more than four years after 9/11. Mr. Chertoff did not chastise the industry for failing to protect chemical plants adequately. He proposed weak federal safety standards. He did not even fully embrace a recently introduced bipartisan Senate bill that would create meaningful standards.

Instead, Mr. Chertoff seemed perfectly content to defer on key security matters to an industry that contributes heavily to Republican campaigns but has proved to be dangerously unwilling to take public safety seriously.

Mein Gott. Speaking of Gott, I guess maybe it's a good thing that Homeland Security has an office for faith-based development (see Homeland Security Gets Religion and its update): "in God we trust", indeed, for we surely can't trust Chertoff. (And this is not even to get into the issue of which Religious Right organizations get all this federal money: one story here.)