National Security, Terrorism, and the Bird Flu

Over at PrawfsBlawg, I have a post that follows up on a topic I've been blogging about a lot lately (here and here). Inspired by a great cartoon by Tom Toles (Washington Post), which I've included in the post, I argue that we're wasting money on elaborate ways to detect terrorists, such as Secure Flight, data mining, and searching bags in NYC subways. Instead, the bird flu remains a very sigificant risk, and we're so focused on terrorism that we might be caught inadequately prepared for a bird flu epidemic. I also include statistics that show that a 9-11 attack each year would not even make the annual top 20 causes of death.