Since 9/11, the U.S. has spent more than $1.1 trillion on homeland security.

To a large number of security analysts, this expenditure makes no sense. The vast cost is not worth the infinitesimal benefit. Not only has the actual threat from terror been exaggerated, they say, but the great bulk of the post-9/11 measures to contain it are little more than what Schneier mocks as “security theater”: actions that accomplish nothing but are designed to make the government look like it is on the job. In fact, the continuing expenditure on security may actually have made the United States less safe.

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For some reason you looked more gigantic in those photos. Were you standing next to a midget?
That guy was pretty short who was standing in front of me. He’s not a midget, but he’s pretty short. That’s why this whole thing is very funny to me. I was going to make up some crazy story that I was found in an orphanage and all that, I’m nine feet tall, but no. I’m just six-foot-five, the guy in front of me was short, and it just happened to be.

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In Greensboro, N.C., U.S. District Judge Catherine Eagles disclosed that two cardiologists wrote to her that the former presidential contender and senator has a medical procedure scheduled next month, so starting his trial on Jan. 30 would “reduce the chance for success,” WRAL reported.

Somewhere, Elizabeth Edwards is smiling.

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