After 9/11, the Feds hastily assembled a “no-fly” list, which seemed like a reasonable thing at the time — but then some idiots got in control of it. Now, 5 years on, it’s clearly a bad joke. Anybody with a name on the list (i.e., who shares a name with someone on the list) is going to get hassled like crazy every single time they fly, and the list contains such unusual names as “Robert Johnson,” “Gary Smith,” and “John Williams.” Also on the list? The president of Bolivia, as well as 14 of the 9/11 hijackers who are, presumably, unlikely to be a problem again.

Guess who’s not on the list? The 11 supposed British terrorists who were under surveillance for months prior to their (impossible, can’t-possibly-work) plot’s disclosure.

The Feds, of course, don’t care:

“Well, Robert Johnson will never get off the list,” says Donna Bucella, who oversaw the creation of the list and has headed up the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Center since 2003. She regrets the trouble they experience, but chalks it up to the price of security in the post-9/11 world. “They’re going to be inconvenienced every time . . . because they do have the name of a person who’s a known or suspected terrorist,” says Bucella.

That’s like something out of Brazil, honestly. This Bucella woman clearly needs some time alone with a CIA interrogator and a clue-by-four. Idiot bureaucrats can relate anything to security, so it’s highly unsurprising this dufus mentioned 9/11 in explaining why every Robert Johnson who tries to fly in the U.S. gets the third degree. How, exactly, does this serve security, Bucella? Dollars to donuts you’ve never given it any thought.

There’s more, if you have the stomach for additional evidence of our government’s malignant ignorance, here. We found the story at Metafilter.