I'm just speechless -- the administration runs up massive deficits and then nickels-and-dimes security on the highest-risk flights:

Despite renewed warnings about possible airline hijackings, the Transportation Security Administration has alerted federal air marshals that as of Friday they will no longer be covering cross-country or international flights, MSNBC.com has learned. The decision to drop coverage on flights that many experts consider to be at the highest risk of attack apparently stems from a policy decision to rework schedules so that air marshals don’t have to incur the expense of staying overnight in hotels....

Several marshals told MSNBC.com that the program is suffering budget troubles and that the agency is looking to make cuts wherever it can....

The move to pull air marshals from any flight requiring them to stay overnight is particularly disturbing to some because it coincides with a new high-level hijacking threat issued by the Department of Homeland Security. That warning memo says that “at least one of these attacks could be executed by the end of the summer,” according to a source familiar with the document....

--MSNBC

Understandably, it's not public knowledge which flights have air marshals. But if terrorists do go on to hijack a cross-country or international flight and there's no marshal on board, and if it's a route where there were marshals before this change of policy took place, I hope someone in the bureaucracy does the patriotic thing and blows the whistle.

(Thanks to BuzzFlash for the link.)