Till now we've assumed that the Department of Homeland Security got hoodwinked into getting involved in the manhunt for the Texas Democrats. Apparently that's not so. (Note to Joe Lieberman, Dan Gerstein, et al.: did you guys pick up on this?) One of the things Homeland Security did to help the Texas Republicans was to put out what amounted to an APB, calling various Texas airports to see if they could track down the Democrats in question. When an official at one of the local airports contacted by Homeland Security asked what was up, the Homeland Security official told him it didn't have anything to do with a downed plane or any problem like that. "This is just somebody looking for politicians they can't find," an unidentified official told Marvin Miller, an airport official in Plainview, Texas, according to a Saturday article in the Washington Post.

So much for an innocent misunderstanding. So much for 'homeland security'. (Note to Tom Ridge: Where's that IG Report?)