Something that both me and my Esteemed Audience can both be horrified by.

http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/Investigation/story?id=1383832&CMP=OTC-RSSFeeds0312

Infuriating quotes:

Officials said a 50-year-old Egyptian man was stopped a week ago at New York's John F. Kennedy Airport. Sources said he had a suspicious pair of shoes that tested positive five times for the explosive substance TATP on the interior of his shoes between the heel and sole.

Three paragraphs later:

After holding him overnight, airport security in New York released him. The FBI was notified after he was released and put out a nationwide alert. FBI officials confirmed that the man's story was true and that he was not a threat.

The FBI was notified after he was released? After he was released? AFTER he was friggin RELEASED? He was held overnight, and no one had time to contact the FBI?

And exactly what was this joker's story about how explosives got between the heel and sole of his shoes? How does that happen innocently?

I mean, I don't think I'm stupid. I know that the Homeland Security Department is a massive boondoggle, a bureaucratic shuffle to make it look like someone is doing something. I know that the TSA is a massive waste of government resources and people's time. Our airport security problem was pretty much fixed by the time the plane in Pennsylvania went down--people figured out that a successful hijacking meant a death sentence, not a 1970's-style hostage ordeal. We didn't need any fancy Homeland Security types to stop the original shoe-bomber--the passengers and crew beat the living hell out of him and hogtied him.

But Jesus Tapdancing Christ, an Egyptian national with explosives in his shoes is detained and RELEASED? And they couldn't even hold him until someone at the FBI could pick up the phone? Or, to put that another way, isn't there anyone at the FBI at night to answer the phone?