Calling everybody back from the beach for this news flash: Former Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge has written a book in which he reveals that the Homeland Security color coded system for describing terrorist threat levels was influenced by political considerations. Who could have guessed that?

Other revelations in Tom Ridge’s book:

- Osama Bin Laden is a Muslim
- Pat Boone was never a suspect in the assassination of John F. Kennedy
- Jim Henson had a thing for puppets
- Snakes have developed a way to get around without any arms or legs

The surprise in Tom Ridge’s book isn’t that the color code system is a sham. The surprise is that a former member of the Department of Homeland Security is willing to admit to the sham.

Okay, so it’s a good thing that Tom Ridge now openly admits that the Bush Administration was creating the false appearance of an ongoing terrorist threat in order to gain political power. However, if no one in the current government is going to follow up revelations like this with public investigations that pull Bush Administration officials before cameras under oath, what is the practical point?

Furthermore, despite promises of reform, the Obama Administration is still using the color-coded terrorist risk system. Even though there hasn’t been a serious, credible terrorist threat in years, Homeland Security under Obama is still using the same color warning level as George W. Bush did. A revelation I’d like to see would come from President Obama himself: An explanation of why he still claims that there is a “high risk” (code orange) of terrorist attack against domestic flights in the United States.

That assessment doesn’t seem to be reality-based, so I’d like to see the same kind of questions about political motivation for Homeland Security threat advisories under Obama as we saw under Bush. If Obama won’t alter the fear-based Homeland Security system, he ought to be held accountable for that lack of change.

Entering an airport just a little while ago, I was pleased to see that one of the many pointless items of George W. Bush’s Homeland Security routine has been done away with. When I walked through the metal detector, I was told that, as of yesterday, I didn’t need to show the very same boarding pass that I had showed to another security agent just 30 seconds before at the beginning of the line.

The Department of Homeland Security is now willing to trust me that I didn’t use some kind of interdimensional portal to become somebody else while waiting in the enclosed security line. That’s a bit of a relief, but it’s just one little bit of Homeland idiocy down, and about 347 still needing to go.

I’d love to see an official Obama Administration explanation of why the nation’s airports remain at Code Orange, for example. The Department of Homeland Security web site reads, “The threat level in the airline sector is High or Orange.”, but under what definition of the word “high” is the threat in the “airline sector” high?

The Department of Homeland Security admits that “there is no credible information warning of an imminent, specific threat to the homeland.” For those of you who need translation into fear-speak, “the homeland” means the United States of America.

There’s no terrorist threat. There is no… terrorist… threat. So, can we please cut the Code Orange, please? Isn’t it time that we all deserved a little Code Aquamarine, or Code Taupe, or Code Periwinkle?

Memo to America: It’s okay to breathe now.

Under the regime of Homeland Security, America has spent most of this decade at Code Orange Alert. Right now, airports are at Code Orange Alert and the rest of America is at Code Orange Alert.

Code Orange means that there is a high risk of terrorist attack.

Code Yellow means that there is a significant risk of terrorist attack.

Code Blue means that there is a general risk of terrorist attack.

Code Green means that there is a low risk of terrorist attack.

Let’s look at the situation rationally: What is the actual risk that there is going to be a terrorist attack today? How about a terrorist attack this month? What about the risk that there will be a terrorist attack this year?

The answers to those questions are all the same: Low, low, low.

There is not a high risk that a terrorist attack will take place any time soon. I can say that with confidence because there hasn’t been a terrorist attack in the United States for a very long time.

If you say to someone that there is a high risk of rain, you mean to be saying, “Hey, you ought to bring your umbrella, because it looks like it’s probably going to rain today.”

A person would not say to someone in the middle of the Sahara Desert, in a place where it rains once every ten years or so, that there is a “high risk” of rain… unless that person were working for the Department of Homeland Security. If that person was working for the Department of Homeland Security, one would issue a Code Orange Alert thunderstorm warning for the Sahara Desert every day of the year for years on end, just because it rained one morning seven years ago.

Still not willing to accept that the USA ought to be at Code Green? Let’s look at this operationally: Did you wake up this morning worrying about how you would deal with the terrorist attack today? Did you even discuss plans with your family just in case there would be a terrorist attack today?

If you did, you’re truly paranoid.

If you didn’t, that means that you’ve decided that the chance that there will be a terrorist attack is low. Low risk means code green.

So why isn’t the USA at Code Green? Hmmm…