"If power companies invested in infrastructure the way the Department of Homeland Security and Congress fight terrorism, a New Yorker wouldn't be able to run a hairdryer but everyone in Bozeman, Montana could light up a stadium."

This is one of the devastating revelations in "Are We Ready for the Next 9/11: The Sorry State -- and Stunning Waste -- of Homeland Security Spending," a hard-edged report by American Enterprise Institute researcher Veronique de Rugy, released March 1. It's enough to make you mad as hell.

De Rugy cites lack of congressional oversight, improper use of security funds, failure to prioritize, and lawmakers 'Let's Fight the Last War' mentality as the key reasons Congress is squandering, wasting, misappropriating, and just plain throwing away so much of out homeland defense money.

"Congress," de Rungy writes, "loaded the fiscal year 2006 homeland security bill with earmark projects [n.b.: that's bureaucratese for pork] having nothing to do with homeland security, and President Bush signed it."

Like what, you ask? Well, let's see...

• DHS handed out $153 million in Christmastime programs offering food and shelter for the poor.
• The Princeton, New Jersey, Fire Department now has a lovely set of Nautilus exercise equipment, free weights, and a Bowflex machine, courtesy of DHS and your tax dollars.
• $7.9 million went for investigations of missing and exploited children
• $102,000 was spent to promote public awareness of the child pornography tip line.
• $203,000 of your tax dollars funded Project Alert, a drug use prevention program for schools
• In Washington, D.C., Mayor Anthony Williams used $100,000 in homeland security money to fund his popular summer jobs program.

I can just imagine Mayor Williams discussing his innovative use of the city's $100,000 DHS grant with some top aides: "Here's the deal: if anybody asks us why we spent a hundred grand on summer jobs instead of protecting our infrastructure or modernizing and standardizing our communications equipment so our first responders can actually talk to one another, we tell 'em the money kept Washington DC kids here in the District instead of going off to join al-Qa'ida. We'll call it PARC -- Proactive Anti-Recruitment Counterterrorism."

High on de Rungy's list of screw-ups is the lack of effective Congressional oversight. Of course, so far as I'm concerned the phrase "effective congressional oversight" is an oxymoron.

Still, even for Congress, this is bad. Here's the story. Congress in its wisdom (yes I am being facetious here) created DHS by amalgamating, combining, juxtaposing, pick-and-choosing roughly two dozen agencies, all with different cultures, modus operandi, and missions. The Secret Service, for example, was transferred from the Treasury Department to DHS. The former Immigration and Naturalization Service and the U.S. Customs Service were combined to form Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. Airport security was given to a new DHS department known as the Transportation Security Administration, or TSA (which some people insist really stands for Thousands Standing Around).

But while the Congress was more than willing to combine disparate agencies under one roof, it was totally unwilling to do the same with its oversight responsibilities. You have to understand that just about every single Member of Congress has the same overriding objective: to get reelected. This mission is more critical than, oh, national security, or the Global War on Terror, or making sure that our DHS actually functions. And so, all those congresspersons who had oversight when the two dozen separate agencies were two dozen separate agencies, fought hard to keep their oversight responsibilities after the agencies were folded into the DHS souffle. More chances to appear on TV. More chances to receive PAC money from all those companies that want to do business with DHS. More chance to have fundraisers sponsored by lobbyists for all the DHS-related industries looking for a piece of the pie

Which meant that in 2005, DHS's bosses were summoned to appear before 88 separate congressional committees and subcommittees to talk about what DHS was doing. No wonder Michael Chertoff was so ill prepared for Katrina. He was too busy writing testimony for the best Congress money can buy.

And make no mistake: each and every member of those 88 committees and subcommittees wanted to make sure that his/her/its district got its fair share of DHS dollars -- whether it was appropriate, or not. Which is why Grand Forks County, North Dakota (POP 70,000) has $1.3 million in decontamination tents, a semi-armored van, and two WMD response trailers. Who knows when Grand Forks could turn into the next Fallujah? And why North Pole Alaska (POP 1570) has half a million dollars worth of homeland security rescue and communications equipment. Hey, even Santa needs a SWAT team. And why Colchester, Vermont (POP 18,000) got a brand new $58,000 rescue vehicle capable of boring through concrete. Doh.

Now, none of those purchases was illegal under DHS guidelines. But as de Rugy so aptly notes, "Are those guidelines appropriate? And while there may be ways to justify spending homeland security funds in this location, does anyone really believe that Vermont, North Dakota, and Wisconsin are the front lines of the war on terror?"

In a surprising summary, de Rungy notes that "the greatest potential for reform today is coming from DHS. Following the 9/11 [Commission] recommendations, it has started pushing for a complete overhaul of the grant formula and a more risk-based approach to homeland security in general." ­If Congress is waiting for guidance before it acts, it need wait no longer.

"But that," she concludes pessimistically, "might be wishful thinking. Congress, by nature, is an inefficient institution driven by self-interested politicians. Wasteful spending is par for the course. And if it is sad that lawmakers treat homeland security the same way they treat everything else, it certainly isn't surprising."

Amen.

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I received an email from Sam Wyman, whose long and distinguished career as an operations officer at CIA is well-known, dissenting from one element of my "The Camel Congress Built" column two weeks ago. Here is Wyman's note in its entirety.

"A good piece, my friend, but I must take issue with you about Mary Margaret Graham.  She was on my team in Madrid 1985-87 and was one of the best ops officers I had.  She was gutsy but cool under fire, aggressive but with good judgment and realistic/objective about why we were in Madrid.  When I wanted street work done, I found that she was the one I could rely on to get it done without dirtying her/our skirts.  She was COB/Stamford when I took command of the pertinent HQs division.  Stamford wasn't much of a job but she had fallen a foul of the glass ceiling.  She was assigned to New York twice, the second time as chief, and walked her troops calmly out of a collapsing World Trade Center building on 9/11."