In order to effectively control the spread of HIV in the United States, prevention efforts need to target individuals already living with HIV (Baskin, Braithwaite, Eldred, & Glassman, 2005). This is consistent with the emphasis placed by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) on the need to prevent new infections by working with people already diagnosed with HIV (CDC, 2003). This is important because some HIV-positive individuals continue to engage in behaviors that could transmit HIV infection. (Gordon, Forsyth, Stall, & Cheever, 2005).

There is reason to believe that religiosity may promote safer sex practices. The limited literature on this topic provides support for the inclusion in prevention programs of what have been described as "other-sensitive" motivators for practicing safe sex (Nimmons & Folkman, 1999). In a qualitative study of sexually active gay men, a large majority of both HIV-positive and HIV-negative individuals reported engaging in safer sexual practices because of their desire to protect others based on their own personal ethical or moral beliefs (Nimmons & Folkman, 1999). For many in the sample, their prosocial values were directly related to a reported spiritual commitment in their lives. Moreover, the importance of concern for others' welfare is stressed by virtually all of the world's major religions (Koenig, McCullough, & Larson, 2001), providing a basis for an association between religiosity and prosocial behaviors like protecting one's sexual partners from HIV infection.

Studies examining the relationship between religiosity and sexual behaviors more generally (i.e., outside the HIV-risk context) have found that individuals who attend religious services more often are less likely to be sexually active, and if active, have fewer sexual partners and less frequent sexual intercourse (Lefkowitz, Gillen, Shearer, & Boone, 2004). Other studies that use different measures of religiosity have found similar results. For example, individuals who report having a religious affiliation have fewer sexual partners than those with no affiliation (Rowatt & Schmitt, 2003). These results suggest that religiosity may deter individuals from engaging in behaviors that could transmit HIV infection.

Religion is a dominant force in the lives of people in the United States (Fuller, 2001), including populations at risk for HIV. For example, data from the 1991-2000 General Social Surveys indicate that gay men (a major group affected by HIV in the United States) report a similar frequency of church attendance as male heterosexuals (3.21 and 3.28, respectively, with 0 signifying never and 8 signifying almost every day). Attendance among female heterosexuals was higher (3.90). In addition, gay men do not differ in their frequency of prayer from female heterosexuals (the most devout group; 4.76 and 4.80, respectively, with 1 signifying never and 6 signifying several times a day), whereas male heterosexuals (4.48) do not differ from gay males but have lower rates than female heterosexuals (Sherkat, 2002).

Among African Americans, a population disproportionately affected by HIV/AIDS (CDC, 2005), high levels of both church attendance and prayer are reported. Data from the National Survey of Black Americans found that, among the more than 90% of African Americans who report attending religious services as an adult (in addition to weddings and funerals), about 70% state that they attend services at least a few times a month (Taylor, Chatters, & Levin, 2004). Several national surveys have also consistently found that overall 80% of African Americans report praying several times a week (Taylor et al., 2004). Similarly, among Latinos religion plays an important role, although the level of religious involvement (such as church attendance or membership in church groups) by Latinos does vary, depending on their specific denominational affiliation (Hunt, 2000).

Given the role that religion plays in the lives of so many people, including major subgroups infected with HIV, and religion's potential in motivating prosocial behavior, it is important to examine how religiosity is related to HIV risk behaviors. Moderate to high levels of religiosity among people with HIV, together with an association between religiosity and risk, would suggest largely untapped methods of promoting safer sexual behavior among people with HIV. Possibilities include linking such behavior to religious values or promoting sexual safety through churches.

In addition to examining religiosity's relation to HIV-related risk behaviors, it is also important to examine how these behaviors may be associated with particular religious denominational affiliations. Religiosity and denominational affiliation need to be examined separately because they measure different constructs. An individual's denominational affiliation usually provides limited information about that person's religiosity because denominations include people with markedly different levels of devotion (Koenig et al., 2001).

Chicago city officials appear to be embarrassed by the phenomenon known as Christmas. They asked that an annual downtown holiday festival not include a sponsor. New Line Cinema, which, through its distribution of The Nativity Story, is too connected to Christianity and may, therefore, "be offensive to some people."

As a Jew and rabbi, I am not offended that there are Christians who have a different religion than mine and that they love and celebrate it. What is there to be offended about? I have, however, read that CAIR and other Muslim groups have written that the only legitimate religion is Islam and their hope is that one day America be ruled by Islamic law, the sharia. If they are offended by displays in this country of Christian themes, they can be spared such discomfort by living in Saudi Arabia where there are no Christian symbols-they are outlawed.

Abolishing Our Heritage

Outlawing Christian symbols here in America is what some hard-core liberals would love to do. They simply need the justifiable rationales. First, they invoked "separation of church and state." But that covers only public places, the schools and the municipality. So what rationale can be conjured to rid America of Christianity at other venues? It is the multicultural excuse that "people of other faiths will be offended." The truth is that it is the secular elites who are offended, indeed embarrassed, by Christian symbols. It is they who are at war with Christianity in America.


What if a battalion from overseas landed in this country intent on abolishing our heritage, traditions and the rituals dear to us-all of which make our lives worthwhile? No doubt, we would call them an enemy and fight with all we have. Simply because those now doing so are citizens within our own country, living among us, makes them no less an adversary, requiring from us no less a counter-offensive.

For decades, the American public has been snookered by the left into believing that, in the name of "inclusion" and multiculturalism, public symbols of Christmas and expressions of Christianity needed to be scaled back. In fact, we are discovering that those forces actually wish to bury Christmas, placing outside the pale of "diversity" only one religion: Christianity.

Those calling always for a "separation of church and state" do so only regarding Christianity. Only Christian displays are considered "offensive to others." From Hollywood and the media come snide and disparaging remarks about Christianity that would bring total ostracism if made regarding Islam. Judaism. Hinduism or Kwanzaaism.

We are living in a new era. Gone are the days when what divided liberals from conservatives were the softer issues of taxes and labor unions. Today's left strives to change completely the nature and essence of America. It is working to transform America radicully from what it has been since our very founding. Many abhor the historic America we love, are embarrassed by it, see it as a predatory force of evil, and wish to remake it into a Euro/Socialist country such as France or Sweden. As internationalists, they yearn not for America as is but the neutered "secular utopia" it can become-that they will lead.

Only one institution stands in the way of their hoped-for silent revolution. It is the Judeo-Christian ethic, that uniquely American Christianity that links itself with the Old Testament. From that Judeo-Christian ethic derive all of the historically conservative rules of economics, politics and the social order that have made America great. Through the notion of "man created in the image of God," this ethic has infused the American individual with the virtues of self-reliance, accountability, individuality, risk-taking, heroism, courage and idealism.

The well-known goodwill of the American people, with their penchant for accommodation, has been exploited by those whose ultimate goal is the slow but inexorable dissolution here of Christianity and, ultimately, Americanism. The removal of the nativity scene is thefirst step toward their real goal of abolishing the most special of American governing features: local control-where people in their localities decide how they will live and which values they wish reflected, not bureaucrats in D.C., elitists in New York, celebrities in Hollywood or judicial tyrants on the 9th Circuit.

Our domestic "internationalists" know that to transform America, they must first mute its Judeo-Christian foundations. Our secularists realize that to erase Judeo-Christianity, they must first de-legitimize the America that spawned and refreshes it.

Being well-heeled and wealthy, today's leftist revolutionaries from within are not economic Marxists but "cultural Marxists." Their revolution is happening not through guns but lawyers, sociologists, academia and media. Their tool is "political correctness."

The ACLU and its lawyers, for example, are not so much and-religious as they are antiChristian, as evidenced by their relentless search-and-destroy mission against any outwardly Christian signs while advocating on behalf of Islamic religious needs. Jewish ones, and even the rights of those publicly practicing witchcraft "religion." While liberal lawyers rail against "Silent Night," they have no problem with the noise emanating from call-to-prayer wails from mosques in Michigan. Crosses and Bibles on work desks are unconstitutional, they contend, but wearing a burka that covers one's face on a driver's license is just fine, though it is an evasion of the purpose of the law.

IN January, George Pataki addressed the New York state legislature as governor for the eleventh time--and proceeded to deliver an interminable speech on creating more bird sanctuaries, building new ethanol facilities, and encouraging kids to exercise. In what turned out to be a major applause line, he announced: "This morning I signed an executive order requiring all state agencies and authorities to begin using non-toxic cleaning products." When Pataki finally focused on taxes--New Yorkers endure the highest tax burden in the country--he mostly bragged about the achievements of the past. His major new proposal was to accelerate the phase-out of an income tax increase--a tax hike that had occurred on his own watch.
In fairness, Pataki didn't actually favor that particular tax hike. Democrats and Republicans in the state legislature conspired to pass it against his wishes and then overrode his veto. Yet as Pataki contemplates another run for governor in 2006--or perhaps even a campaign for the presidency in 2008--it is difficult not to compare his latest state-of-the-state speech with the one he delivered a decade ago. "The government of New York state is too big and it spends too much money," said the Pataki of 1995. Still on a high from his upset victory over Mario Cuomo, his liberal Democratic predecessor, the new GOP governor laid out a plan for aggressive tax cuts and spending reductions. And in the months ahead, he achieved much of what he sought and saved New York taxpayers billions of dollars.
Somewhere along the way, however, Pataki lost his enthusiasm for this bold project. Ten years ago, he had a chance to become one of America's great governors. But starting in the late 1990s, he devoted much of his energy to raising taxes and fees to keep up with state spending, arranging billion-dollar backroom deals with union bosses, and worrying about what kind of toilet-bowl cleaners swirl into the potties of Albany. Today, he presides over a state that just finished dead last in a survey of economic freedom conducted by Forbes magazine and the Pacific Research Institute. His tenure as the Empire State's chief executive began with incredible promise--but its legacy almost certainly will be one of squandered opportunity, shrunken ambition, and conservative disappointment.

More than five years after 9/11, the federal government has yet to come to grips with basic questions about priorities, roles, and funding.

In August 2006, British authorities announced that they had uncovered a plot in which liquid explosives would be used to destroy airliners en route from England to the United States. When the U.S. Transportation Security Administration (TSA) responded by banning all liquids and gels from passenger aircraft cabins, it was widely reported that such action was necessary because existing screening equipment could not detect the kind of explosives involved in the plot. This is perhaps understandable, given the daunting technological challenge of developing detectors that are not only sensitive enough to identify explosives from among the wide array of liquids routinely carried on aircraft, but also compact and affordable enough to be widely deployed and quick enough to not unduly impede passenger flow.
But this response comes 11 years after the similar Bojinka plot (a plan to bomb 12 U.S.-registered aircraft flying across the Pacific) was foiled in 1995, five years after the 9/11 hijackings that produced unprecedented attention and funding for aviation security, and two years after the 2004 law that sought to implement the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States' (9/11 Commission's) recommendation to prioritize the development and deployment of effective checkpoint explosives detectors. By itself, this is sobering, but when taken together with widespread evidence that such limited progress is the rule rather than the exception across all transportation security programs, a fundamental reassessment is in order about how the United States is approaching this issue.

Thanks to an innovative humanitarian project called Kiro for Kids, suffering children in northern Thailand are receiving the gift of chiropractic care.

The Akha, Lahu and Karen children of northern Thailand are some of the most at-risk people in the world, and yet they also are among the most neglected and marginalized. A combination of logging in the hill country, military unrest in nearby Myanmar (Burma) and persistent stealing of children for human trafficking is devastating to these tribal people. They are subsistence farmers for whom exposure to a rapidly changing world over the past few decades has been impossible for them to adapt to. It is commonplace to have their children, both boys and girls, stolen from them at gunpoint, never to see them again. Those who do make it back to their tribal villages have AIDS and die a short time later.
There are many humanitarian groups providing care at various levels for these people, especially the children. One of these groups is the New Life Foundation, an organization directed by Karen Smith, an American Christian psychologist, whose team rescues girls from the sex slave trade. The girls at New Life are loved back to health and self-esteem, given an education, vocational training and preparation for a useful life in the wider community. Another key organization is the Children of the Golden Triangle (CGT) Akha Training Centre. This group, directed by David and Asa Stevenson, provides food, accommodation, education, vocational training and a safe haven for more than 500 children from surrounding
Without assistance, these children would be forced to go without even the most basic health care. Into this spectrum, Kiro Kids from Australia has created a program called Kiro for Kids. As director, I have been travelling several times a year to various sites in northern Thailand to examine and provide chiropractic care for the children. Several other chiropractors have now embraced the vision and have volunteered to accompany me on my trips. In 2006, this team has provided chiropractic care for more than 1,200 children throughout the region. Since 2004, when I undertook my first trip to Chiang Mai, six other chiropractors from the United Kingdom, Australia and South Africa have joined the team and volunteer one or two weeks each in an operation I have coined, "To Thailand With Love." The following summarizes what has been achieved in the past two and half years:

* Regular visits to clinics at the Children of the Golden Triangle Akha Training Centre (CGT): www.childrengoldentriangle.org.

* Coordination of efforts to raise funds for clothing, shoes and school-related costs for Akha tribal children. To date, over $35,000 AUD has been received and passed on, in full, to various organizations supporting and providing for the Akha children, or used to pay expenses for chiropractors to travel to Thailand and assist us to provide chiropractic care.

* Sponsorship and logistical support/coordination for the directors of CGT to conduct a seven-week tour of southeastern Australia, to raise awareness of the plight of the Akha people. More than 120 sponsorships were received during this trip.

* Coordination of arrangements for one CGT leader to live in Australia for a period of several months to undertake an English as a second language (ESL) course, with a view of going back to CGT to teach English language studies to the tribal people of the area and attend University.

* Regular visiting clinics to Lahu tribal children situated along the highly volatile Burmese/Thai border.

* Introduction of chiropractic for autistic children to a Thai national children's hospital specializing in neurological disorders.

* Provision of chiropractic services to the girls of the New Life Foundation in Chiang Mai.

* Provision of chiropractic care to an orphanage in northern Thailand sheltering 200 children suffering from tuberculosis.

* Development and implementation of a training program for Akha teenagers in basic health evaluation and surveillance techniques and protocols.

* Development of a school and community health centre in three Akha villages located deep in the mountains near the Burmese border.

All of this has been a great achievement, particularly because it has been accomplished in such a short time. Perhaps the most pleasing achievement of 2006 has been the recruitment of Dr. Kirstin Shearar from Durban, South Africa, who has been travelling to Chiang Mai to deliver chiropractic care for the first time to the girls of the New Life Foundation (www. newlifecenterthailand.org), some as young as 8 years old, who have been rescued from hideous sexual exploitation in Thai brothels. I have been working with the director, Ms. Karen Smith, preparing for such a service and I am very excited that the road has been paved for Dr Shearar to provide chiropractic care to these deeply shattered and abused Akha tribal girls. It has long been my desire to provide treatment for these severely damaged girls, but have not been in a position to do so because they obviously need a female chiropractor.

IN January, George Pataki addressed the New York state legislature as governor for the eleventh time--and proceeded to deliver an interminable speech on creating more bird sanctuaries, building new ethanol facilities, and encouraging kids to exercise. In what turned out to be a major applause line, he announced: "This morning I signed an executive order requiring all state agencies and authorities to begin using non-toxic cleaning products." When Pataki finally focused on taxes--New Yorkers endure the highest tax burden in the country--he mostly bragged about the achievements of the past. His major new proposal was to accelerate the phase-out of an income tax increase--a tax hike that had occurred on his own watch.
In fairness, Pataki didn't actually favor that particular tax hike. Democrats and Republicans in the state legislature conspired to pass it against his wishes and then overrode his veto. Yet as Pataki contemplates another run for governor in 2006--or perhaps even a campaign for the presidency in 2008--it is difficult not to compare his latest state-of-the-state speech with the one he delivered a decade ago. "The government of New York state is too big and it spends too much money," said the Pataki of 1995. Still on a high from his upset victory over Mario Cuomo, his liberal Democratic predecessor, the new GOP governor laid out a plan for aggressive tax cuts and spending reductions. And in the months ahead, he achieved much of what he sought and saved New York taxpayers billions of dollars.
Somewhere along the way, however, Pataki lost his enthusiasm for this bold project. Ten years ago, he had a chance to become one of America's great governors. But starting in the late 1990s, he devoted much of his energy to raising taxes and fees to keep up with state spending, arranging billion-dollar backroom deals with union bosses, and worrying about what kind of toilet-bowl cleaners swirl into the potties of Albany. Today, he presides over a state that just finished dead last in a survey of economic freedom conducted by Forbes magazine and the Pacific Research Institute. His tenure as the Empire State's chief executive began with incredible promise--but its legacy almost certainly will be one of squandered opportunity, shrunken ambition, and conservative disappointment.

LOSING HIS WAY

The 59-year-old Pataki is one of the most unassuming characters in politics. He would slip into the background of any room if his 6-foot, 5-inch height didn't have him towering over much of it. Last year, a Quinnipiac University poll asked New Yorkers whether dinner with Pataki would be "fun"--and more of them said no (48 percent) than yes (42 percent). It's no surprise that Rudy Giuliani completely eclipsed him in the aftermath of 9/11. Pataki's speeches are bland even by gubernatorial standards, and they seem to emerge naturally from a laconic manner that has made many people in his own party feel utter indifference toward him. Liberals like to compare Pataki to George W. Bush, and not just because he attended Yale and became governor of a large state. Instead, they think he's dumb and lazy. The charge isn't fair, because Pataki isn't dumb. (Of course, the charge against Bush is false on both counts.)

And lazy probably isn't the best word for Pataki, either. Instead, he's disengaged--and remains aloof from some of his most important responsibilities. The governor has strayed from the more or less conservative principles that marked his political rise, lost his ability to bend the state legislature, and abandoned his responsibility to strengthen the GOP in New York. "Pataki-land has become a place that sells out on everything," says George Marlin, a Pataki appointee to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. "The governor is going to leave the Republican party intellectually bankrupt and the state fiscally bankrupt."

Conservatives weren't thinking about any kind of bankruptcy on election night in 1994, when Pataki defeated Cuomo and became an instant political celebrity. He had spent eight years in the state assembly and two more in the senate building a reputation for fiscal thrift and social liberalism. Few on the right had major qualms backing him because his social liberalism never took on the flamboyant qualities of, say, Giuliani's--Pataki was clearly a family man whose support for abortion didn't keep him from voting to restrict Medicaid funding of it. His race for governor was often portrayed as the handiwork of a king-making senator. To be sure, Alfonse D'Amato played a crucial part in Pataki's securing of the GOP nomination. But Pataki also was his own man, and he had spent years casting votes against Cuomo budgets, which put him in a perfect position to be an anti-Cuomo candidate at a time when voters hungered for such a thing. During the campaign, he called for tax cuts and reinstating the death penalty--and he knocked off a liberal icon by four points. Even in a huge Republican year, this was a resounding victory.

Mapping Canada's physical space involves much more than plotting geographic positions on paper. Also implied are the acts of claiming territory through charting and naming, negotiating racial and gender politics, and recording effects of human development on the physical environment. Two recent books broach some of these complex questions in their discussions of little-known figures who, in the early twentieth century, helped map what is now Canada. Both The Woman Who Mapped Labrador The Life and Expedition Diary of Mina Hubbard and Mapper of Mountains: M.P. Bridgland in the Canadian Rockies, 1902-1930 make extensive use of archival and historical records in the form of diaries, letters, maps, and photographs; both are highly collaborative projects; and both, at least in small ways, raise political questions related to exploring and charting geographical space in Canada.

The first of these two books is the diary detailing Mina Hubbard's 1905 expedition to Labrador with four Métis, Cree, and Inuit companions. The diary has been painstakingly transcribed, edited, and introduced by Roberta Buchanan of the Department of English at Memorial University and Bryan Greene of the Geological Survey of Newfoundland and Labrador, and is accompanied by a comprehensive biography written by Anne Hart of the Centre for Newfoundland Studies. (All three collaborators have since retired from their official positions.) In the title of their book, Buchanan, Hart, and Greene emphasize one aspect of Mina Hubbard's achievement: her mapping of the portion of Labrador from Grand Lake north along the Naskaupi and George Rivers to Ungava Bay. This cartographic focus is reinforced by the inclusion of a fold-out replica of the 18-by-20-inch four-colour map that Hubbard produced with the help of the American Geographical Society and that was inserted into early editions of the book she published about the expedition. Mapping was just one part of Hubbard's activities, however, and is just one aspect of her diary's appeal. As the editors note in their introduction, her journal raises questions related to the politics of exploration, attitudes towards wilderness, and relations of gender, class, and race at the time of her travels. Illustrated by a number of photographs taken during her expedition, as well as by family photos and new maps of parts of her trip, the diary is a wonderful resource for those interested in early Canadian travel writing, photography, and cartography.

For anyone who has read Hubbard's book, A Woman's Way through Unknown Labrador: An Account of the Exploration of the Nascaupee and George Rivers, first published in 1908 and available since 2004 in a scholarly edition edited by Sherrill Grace, it is immediately evident that the diary served as source material for Hubbard's book. The daily entries document not only the trip but also Hubbard's development as an author. While the first entries are perfunctory, by the middle Hubbard describes the landscape with eloquence, quotes the remarks of her travelling companions in colourful detail, records geographical details in appealing ways, and feelingly discusses her personal motivations for the trip. In the latter part of the diary, she repeatedly describes the process of using previous entries to create her book. Having strained my eyes to read the diary in its original form in the Centre for Newfoundland Studies Archives, I found it a pleasure to read this handsome, highly legible edition.1 The published version allows scholars to make comparisons between journal and book easily, and in particular to note the way in which Hubbard represented events in significantly different ways in each. As previous scholars who have compared the two have shown, for the book Hubbard edited out intimate reflections about her husband, downplayed her personal relationships with her male, Aboriginal travelling companions, and altered pronouns from plural ("we") to singular ("I") to emphasize individual rather than collective achievement.2

The story revealed by the diary is a fascinating and moving one. The 35year-old Hubbard was completing a trip that her husband, American adventure writer Leonidas Hubbard Jr., had died attempting in 1903. Mina Hubbard was unhappy with the account of the expedition written by his travelling companion, Dillon Wallace, and decided to make her own trip to the area with the help of her husband's guide, George Elson, and to write her own book. As her diary shows, Hubbard and her crew left North West River Post on 27 June 1905, and arrived at George River Post exactly two months later, on 27 August. Hubbard's diary (but not the book) alludes to her dismay that Wallace was making the same trip at the same time. However Wallace, who left with his crew the day before Hubbard, arrived at the post seven weeks behind her, after a much more harrowing trip. Buchanan suggests in her introduction that the passages in the diary that discuss Wallace show Hubbard in "her least favourable light" (2005, 16), but to my mind they point out more clearly the private nature of the diary form as they reveal her passionate feelings about her husband and about the man who survived while her life partner died. While she was waiting for the ship to take her back to Canada after she arrived at George River Post, for example, Hubbard wrote that her "victory" would be complete if she could "get my story and some of my pictures in print before W. [Wallace] is even heard from" (269). When she was forced to share accommodation with Wallace on the second anniversary of her husband's death, she wrote, "the continual dropping of a not too melodious voice threatens to break up my nervous system" (310).

More than five years after 9/11, the federal government has yet to come to grips with basic questions about priorities, roles, and funding.

In August 2006, British authorities announced that they had uncovered a plot in which liquid explosives would be used to destroy airliners en route from England to the United States. When the U.S. Transportation Security Administration (TSA) responded by banning all liquids and gels from passenger aircraft cabins, it was widely reported that such action was necessary because existing screening equipment could not detect the kind of explosives involved in the plot. This is perhaps understandable, given the daunting technological challenge of developing detectors that are not only sensitive enough to identify explosives from among the wide array of liquids routinely carried on aircraft, but also compact and affordable enough to be widely deployed and quick enough to not unduly impede passenger flow.

But this response comes 11 years after the similar Bojinka plot (a plan to bomb 12 U.S.-registered aircraft flying across the Pacific) was foiled in 1995, five years after the 9/11 hijackings that produced unprecedented attention and funding for aviation security, and two years after the 2004 law that sought to implement the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States' (9/11 Commission's) recommendation to prioritize the development and deployment of effective checkpoint explosives detectors. By itself, this is sobering, but when taken together with widespread evidence that such limited progress is the rule rather than the exception across all transportation security programs, a fundamental reassessment is in order about how the United States is approaching this issue.


Although customs agents or checkpoint screeners are often the focus of published reports on security lapses, the shortcomings in the current system do not rest primarily with the front-line personnel charged with implementing transportation security. Rather, the problem is that the Bush administration and Congress have failed to adequately address the key, big-picture questions about the management, funding, accountability, and, above all, priorities for the emerging transportation security system. Although progress in bolstering transportation security has been made since 9/11, additional action is needed to remedy continuing deficiencies.

Before September 11, 2001, U.S. transportation security was limited in extent and purpose. Transit police and subway surveillance cameras sought to deter or detect criminal activity. Customs agents at ports looked for smugglers. In aviation, the only sector that had received significant security policy attention and resources from the federal government, the emphasis was overwhelmingly directed overseas. The events of 9/11 altered all of that. The federal government responded with a flurry of initiatives, including:

* The Aviation and Transportation security Act of 2001, which created TSA to be responsible for the security of all transportation modes and established deadlines for the implementation of specific aviation security measures.

* The Maritime Transportation Security Act of 2002, which set security guidelines for ports and ships.

* The Homeland Security Act of 2002, which established the Department of Homeland security (DHS) by combining 22 federal agencies, including TSA, the Coast Guard, the Customs Service, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

* The Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004, which turned many of the 9/11 Commission's recommendations, including those relating to transportation security, into statutory mandates.

The expanded policy attention was accompanied by a substantial rise in federal funding for transportation security, which increased from well under $200 million in fiscal year (FY) 2001 (almost all of which went for aviation security) to more than $8.5 billion in FY 2006, with 70% devoted to aviation.

As a result, improvements have been made in many areas of transportation security during the past five years. Passenger aircraft are much less vulnerable to another 9/11-style of attack. More air and sea cargo is being scrutinized in some fashion. More attention has been given to vulnerability assessments of the nation's transportation infrastructure and to security training for law enforcement and transportation workers. Above all, there is greater awareness of the terrorist threat. But major questions remain about the effectiveness of all elements of the new system.

The Heritage Foundation and the Center for Strategic and International Studies jointly reported that DHS "is weighed down with bureaucratic layers, is rife with turf warfare, and lacks a structure for strategic thinking and policymaking." According to a 2005 survey of homeland security officials and independent experts, "the department remains underfinanced and understaffed, and suffers from weak leadership." The 9/11 Commission found that "The current efforts do not yet reflect a forward-looking strategic plan systematically analyzing assets, risks, costs, and benefits." The successor to the 9/11 Commission, the 9/11 Public Discourse Project (PDP), reported that, as of December 2005, progress in implementing the commission's transportation security recommendations rated a "C" for airport checkpoint screening for explosives; a "C-" for the National Strategy for Transportation Security, a "D" for checked bag and cargo screening, and an "F" for airline passenger prescreening.