Uh oh: 67 of 70 undercover agents successfully snuck weapons and fake explosives through TSA

Back when the Los Angeles Dodgers were terrible, Johnny Carson used this joke in his Carnac routine:

The answer is Catch 22. And the question? What would the Dodgers do if you hit them 100 fly balls?

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If anyone can find those awful former Dodgers today, they should hire them at the TSA. They'd be an improvement over the current crew. A big improvement:

Homeland Security officials confirmed to Fox News earlier Monday that TSA screeners failed 67 out of 70 tests -- or 96 percent -- carried out by special Department of Homeland Security investigators known as "red teams," as part of a DHS inspector general review. In one case, an undercover agent with a fake bomb strapped to his back set off a magnetometer -- but the screener still failed to find it. Before announcing the reassigning of Carraway, an 11-year TSA veteran, Johnson issued a statement outlining a series of actions he had ordered in response to the findings, including more training for all transportation security officers, re-evaluation of airport screening equipment and continued covert testing. "We take these findings very seriously," he said, adding ""The numbers in these reports never look good out of context, but they are a critical element in the continual evolution of our aviation security."

I'm not even sure how it's possible to be this inept. You'd almost have to be trying to. I realize the TSA officers are unionized and I'm sure that's a factor in this, but seriously, once you're trained on the machines, how do you not notice when someone sets off the magnetometer? That's not a subtle machine. The last few years I've flown a fair amount and there's a number of things I don't really understand about TSA's processes, one of which is the random method they seem to use in determining who gets TSA pre-check (essentially an express pass to the front of the line) and who doesn't. They often select my 14-year-old son for it, and that makes sense because he's a kid. But they'll pick other people for no apparent reason, and you wonder sometimes if the whole thing has become so rote and random that they're just phoning it in at this point. On a certain level you certainly have to lay this at Obama's feet, although at the same time you have to give the administration credit for conducting the undercover operation that exposed the problems. And yeah, those are some problems. When you miss 67 out of 70, you're not just doing your job poorly. You're basically not doing it at all.