Oh, Those Scamps at the Department of Homeland Insecurity

From The Times.. and they're right: it's really no laughing matter:

The Department of Homeland Security never really makes us feel all that safe.

A government list of potential terrorist targets that came to light recently is only comforting if the roundup is intended, by its very absurdity, to confound the enemy into total inaction. Among other theoretically threatened places included in the federal antiterrorism database are a provincial petting zoo, an Amish popcorn factory and such backwater assets as a tackle shop, a check casher, a doughnut maker, a flea market and, in the case of one community, a “Beach at End of a Street.”

One’s first instinct is to guffaw at this odd collection of assets whose “criticality,’’ in the words of the department’s own inspector general, “is not readily apparent.”

But it is far from laughable when one realizes that the database is used by the agency as a factor in divvying the hundreds of millions in grants to localities — including the program that dealt 40 percent cuts to two proven targets, the national capital and New York City. The agency promises clearer guidelines soon so that the states themselves can produce a more credible list.

Who knew Indiana and petting zoos were so damned attractive to al Qaeda?