So what, exactly, do our homeland security people do all day?

Father of plane terrorist reported him to the U.S. Embassy six months ago.

In Nigeria, retired bank executive Alhaji Umaru Mutallab told The Associated Press he traveled from his home in the Muslim-dominated north to meet officials in Abuja, the capital, about his son.

Mutallab told The Associated Press that his son was a one-time university student in London who had left Britain to travel abroad. He said his son hadn’t lived in London “for some time” but he wasn’t sure exactly where he had gone. “I believe he might have been to Yemen, but we are investigating to determine that,” the elder Mutallab said.

Another son of the elder Mutallab told Reuters that the suspect “is my brother.”Nigeria’s This Day newspaper cited family members as saying the elder Mutallab had been uncomfortable with his son’s “extreme religious views” and had reported him to the U.S. Embassy in the capital Abuja and to Nigerian security agencies six months ago.

I don’t know enough about the state of world-wide terrorism to make a definitive judgement here: it’s possible that our embassies are swamped with alarms from parents warning that their children are terrorists. Maybe there’s a line of the folks outside the embassy doors each morning, waiting for the ambassador to show up so they can turn in their kids. But I’d expect our people to at least show a little curiosity about such reports, especially if the son had travelled to Yemen in the recent past. But there are so many old ladies in wheelchairs to search at our own airports, who can spend the time on matters like this?

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