Pull The Plug On The D.O.E.
Drudge links to a
CBS report documenting the latest in a long series of breathtaking security lapses at the Energy Dept.'s nuclear labs. Seems there are a bunch of keys missing.
There's a simple solution to this neverending problem: abolish the U.S. Department of Energy.
Thanks to uberboob Jimmy Carter, the DoE was created in 1977. (Hell, that alone is more than enough reason to shut it down.) Prior to that time, what few functions the DoE supposedly serves were handled by either other government offices or the free market. The DoE's
website states its purpose for being:
To protect our national security by applying advanced science and nuclear technology to the Nation’s defense ... To protect our national and economic security by promoting a diverse supply and delivery of reliable, affordable, and environmentally sound energy ... To protect our national and economic security by providing world-class scientific research capacity and advancing scientific knowledge ... To protect the environment by providing a responsible resolution to the environmental legacy of the Cold War and by providing for the permanent disposal of the Nation’s high-level radioactive waste.
Applying technology to the Nation's defense? Isn't that the job of the Department of Defense?
Protect our national and economic security? Isn't that the job of the National Security Agency and the Homeland Security Department?
Protect the environment? Isn't that the job of the Environmental Protection Agency?
Advance scientific knowledge? By leaving the doors to our nuclear labs wide open to any and all?
The Department of Energy is a superfluous bureaucracy which is incapable of fulfilling its most basic obligation: protecting America's nuclear labs. As such, it is a national security risk. Though it will never happen, Congress should close the DoE and divvy up its few functions among Defense, Homeland Security, NSA and EPA.
There's a lesson here: never put
egghead scientists in charge of national security. The voters did that in the 1976 presidential election and look what happened.
