Gene Healy on Homeland Security Grants to Local Police

The $7 billion DHS has doled out over the past decade in its Urban Areas Security Initiative program is replete with appalling waste: 13 sno-cone machines for terror-warriors in Michigan, a latrine on wheels for Fort Worth, Texas, and a $100,000 underwater robot for Columbus, Ohio.

But the media focus on "waste, fraud, and abuse" misses a graver problem with DHS's decade-long spending spree, writes Gene Healy. Sno-cone machines and "zombie apocalypse" parties aren't the worst things DHS is underwriting. We ought to worry more about the proliferation of surveillance cameras, mobile biometric scanners, armored personnel carriers and police drones.