And the Guy on the Tricycle with the Cesium-137 in his Pocket Got Waved Through

Here's proof our southern border is secure. A 61-year-old man on a three-wheeled bicycle who was attempting to cross the border from Mexico the legal way -- at a border checkpoint -- was arrested for having a whopping 51 grams of marijuana in his pocket.

51 grams? That's about 1/10th of one lb. I've smoked joints that are heavier than that.

Meanwhile, recently at that or some other U.S. checkpoint along the Mexican border, as we learned this week, undercover agents of Norm Coleman were able to get untold grams of Cesium-137 by border security with a simple ruse and some forged documents. (I say "untold" because, as noted a few years ago in The Guardian, when you're making a dirty bomb, "milligrams of the [radioactive] stuff would be sufficient" to scare the crap out of millions.)

Just to re-cap, here's the tally:

Old man on tricycle? Busted.

Undercover agents with dirty-bomb material? Welcome to the U.S.A.

So raise your glass and toast the skewed priorities of the U.S. government, which are going to get me arrested, killed, or both.

Bonus coverage: It's worth noting Sen. Coleman's lament that it's "easier to buy low-grade radioactive material for a dirty bomb than it is to buy cold medicine that has been restricted because of the meth epidemic." Hey, buddy, it's your war on drugs -- not mine.