Wall Street Journal Travel Editor Scott McCartney writes:

Congress needs to confirm Erroll Southers as TSA chief. The agency has no leader because Congress has dragged its feet on his nomination. Mr. Southers, who has worked for the FBI and handled airport security for Los Angeles World Airports, gets high marks from colleagues and seems well-qualified. Someone needs to be in charge at TSA.

While it's true that “Congress” hasn't confirmed Southers, McCartney's formulation obscures rather than clarifies who is responsible for TSA lacking a leader. Souther's nomination is being blocked by Republican Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina:

Two Senate committees have given their bipartisan blessing to Erroll Southers, a former FBI special agent and a counterterrorism expert who is Obama's nominee. But DeMint has objected to a full Senate vote, saying he wants additional testimony to clarify Southers's stand on unionizing the TSA, a shift Democrats support.

That's why TSA lacks a chief: Not because “Congress has dragged its feet,” but because a Republican Senator is blocking a nominee who has won bipartisan support, simply because the Senator doesn't want TSA to be unionized. And because the rules and customs of the U.S. Senate give one Senator the power to do such a thing.

One of the primary reasons why individual Senators are able to block nominees to important posts like this is that few people know it is happening, so there is little if any public pressure on the Senator to allow the nomination to proceed, or on the Senate to change its rules to prevent situations in which a single Senator is able to keep the President from filling key jobs. And one of the primary reasons why few people know it is happening is that journalists don't make it clear. McCartney's phrasing may appeal to people who like to rail against Congress as a bunch of pinheads who can't get anything done, but it doesn't actually do anything to actually illuminate why this thing isn't getting done -- and, therefore, doesn't actually do much to get it done.

Later, McCartney writes:

Body scanning technology needs to be stepped up and widely deployed. Terrorists carry bombs on their bodies, not their bags. We need to get past privacy concerns and spend the money to get machines in wide use.

But McCartney doesn't explain what the privacy concerns with the machines are, or why he thinks they are outweighed by their benefits. He simply announces that “We need to get past privacy concerns.” Call me crazy, but I like to hear a reason or two before I get on board with dismissing “privacy concerns.”