Airport Screeners Fail to Find Fake Bombs; The Onion Reports Stolen Headline

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The Transportation Security Administration said today that during tests last year, screeners in major airports across the country allowed dummy bomb components to sail through security up to 75 percent of the time. San Francisco airport, which uses privately contracted screeners, did the best of all the test sites with only a 20% failure rate.

Due to last year’s poor performance, TSA now runs drills continuously at every airport in the country, planting fake bomb parts sometimes no larger than a pen cap (next week: no pens on planes!). Screeners who fail must undergo remedial training. Personally, I’d prefer it if they just trained them right the first time. In the meantime, can I have my damn shoes back?

—Casey Miner

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OUR DEADLINE MATH PROBLEM

It’s risky, but also unavoidable: A full one-third of the dollars that we need to pay for the journalism you rely on has to get raised in December. A good December means our newsroom is fully staffed, well-resourced, and on the beat. A bad one portends budget trouble and hard choices.

The December 31 deadline is drawing nearer, and if we’re going to have any chance of making our goal, we need those of you who’ve never pitched in before to join the ranks of MoJo donors.

We simply can’t afford to come up short. There is no cushion in our razor-thin budget—no backup, no alternative sources of revenue to balance our books. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the fierce journalism we do. That’s why we need you to show up for us right now.

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