OMG! It's a Threat to National Security!

All right, this threat to national security is getting to be a little boy who cried wolfish. Michelle Obama recently stated that "childhood obesity" was a threat to national security. Well, I guess it is in good company. I would have never thought that some of these were threats to national security:

The budget deficit, climate change, outsourcing, pro-life groups, gay rights, conservatives and libertarians, illegal immigration, foreign oil, nuclear reactors, overpopulation, coal, Senator Shelby, drug cartels, gangs, Social Security, global economic crisis, wind farms (at least in Great Britain), iPhones (I think that the iPad is still safe), refugees, Bush hatred, Linux, blogs, homosexuality, the internet, AIDS, morality, unions, Dubai Ports, furbies, Tylenol, file sharing, cryptography, Windows XP, backlog of green cards, environmental laws, stealing copper, unlicensed software, North Korea, bees (or lack thereof), white supremacists, Google Earth (only in Belgium), US arms sales (to our friends), underwire bras, IBM, No Child Left Behind, ...

With all of these, one has to wonder what ISN'T a threat to national security? And who gets to be the final arbiter of what is and isn't? Perhaps we need a "Threat to National Security Czar" to sort it all out. Maybe we need a standardized definition of what a "threat to national security" is? Of course, if we did that most of the boogey-men would go away.

I am just going to start laughing at anyone that mentions "threat to national security." If anything can be construed as one, then the phrase is meaningless and just being used to scare people into action. It only took about 50 years of using the race card before it became meaningless. The national security card has bested that by becoming meaningless in less than 10 years. What's next?