Does anyone seriously believe that promoting the ineffectual Office of Homeland Security to cabinet department-level status will make a difference? Cato’s Ivan Eland calmly and coolly obliterates the arguments for a Homeland Security Department in this Newsday op-ed. Eland concludes:

Consolidating even more numerous disparate and sometimes dysfunctional agencies into a new department is likely to result in the same problems and a burgeoning secretarial bureaucracy to attempt to control the whole unwieldy cacophony.

Uh-huh. Dubya just wants something done. It’s the story of his entire presidency — appearance over substance. But I suppose that should not come as a surprise, except to conservatives who actually thought it made a difference whether Gush or Bore was elected.