HOMELAND SECURITY IS A JOKE (CONT’D:)

Lee Cooper of Solomons had done the smart thing and signed up for e-alerts about flight delays. So, thanks to a United Airlines e-mail, he knew that his 7:25 p.m. flight from Knoxville to Dulles was delayed until 9:40 because of air traffic control backups. That should have saved him more than two hours of waiting around at the airport. He did two more smart things: He printed his boarding pass and went to http://www.tsa.gov to check the average wait times at security checkpoints between 8 and 9 p.m.

His diligence, however, was unraveled by the Transportation Security Administration, which closed the security checkpoints at 7:30 p.m.

The result? Cooper ended up on the wrong side of security and had to wait until the next day to depart.

Jeez.