Reorganization can be a good idea. But too often, it's just a way to make it appear as though something is happening. In this case, I happen to have friends who've been involved, and it was a real mess that still hasn't been sorted out. They're probably going to take FEMA out of DHS now. The worst damage was done by the dreadful Administrators Bush appointed, Allbaugh and Brown. But it didn't help for it to be put under another department. Every big reorg is a bureaucratic knife fight for turf that absorbs most of management's attention. I'm sure some of you have been through such changes in someplace you worked; everything constructive slows to a crawl while the people giving orders figure out who'll be in charge of what. And the procurements HDS made were often horrible, wasting huge amounts of money. Congress threw cash at the department and they made sure they spent it.

You may remember that Bush originally didn't want a DHS. It was Lieberman's idea. Eventually, Bush saw the advantage in the concept: it gave him an opportunity to look as though he was doing something, and to strip civil service protections from a whole lot of government workers. That one's still in court, and it didn't help things either.