The Knuckleheads of the Day award

Today's winners are Andrew Speaker, The Center for Disease Control and Homeland Security. We'll start off with Mr. Speaker and Homeland Security.

DENVER -- A globe-trotting Atlanta lawyer with a dangerous strain of tuberculosis was allowed back into the U.S. by a border inspector who disregarded a computer warning to stop him and don protective gear, officials said Thursday.

The inspector has been removed from border duty.

The unidentified inspector explained that he was no doctor but that the infected man seemed perfectly healthy and that he thought the warning was merely "discretionary," officials briefed on the case told The Associated Press. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the matter is still under investigation.

The patient was identified as Andrew Speaker, a 31-year-old personal injury lawyer who returned last week from his wedding and honeymoon trip through Italy, the Greek isles and other spots in Europe. His new father-in-law, Robert C. Cooksey, is a CDC microbiologist whose specialty is TB and other bacteria.


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Speaker is now under quarantine at a hospital in Denver. He is the first infected person to be quarantined by the U.S. government since 1963.

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Speaker said in a newspaper interview that he knew he had TB when he flew from Atlanta to Europe in mid-May for his wedding and honeymoon, but that he did not find out until he was already in Rome that it was an extensively drug-resistant strain considered especially dangerous.

Despite warnings from federal health officials not to board another long flight, he flew home for treatment, fearing he wouldn't survive if he didn't reach the U.S., he said. He said he tried to sneak home by way of Canada instead of flying directly into the U.S.

He was quarantined May 25, a day after he was allowed to pass through the border crossing at Champlain, N.Y., along the Canadian border.

First we have Mr. Speaker's wanton disregard for anyone but himself. He had no business flying when he was a TB carrier and the man knew better.

Then Homeland Security lets Speaker into the country, despite orders for him to be picked up. Can anyone again explain to me how we're supposed to deport 12 million illegals and enforce citizenship only for those legally in the US without a series of clusterfucks to innocent people? Immigration can't do the simplest tasks now, and I'm not just talking Mr. Speaker.

Lets not forget the Centers for Disease Control part in this wretched story.

but that the tests showing he had the most serious form of TB — XDR TB — only came back after he was in Europe. The test results came back on May 21, Fulton County officials said.

The man says he and his bride were in Rome on their honeymoon when they got a message to call the CDC. The CDC official said that they needed to cancel their trip and return home and that the CDC would call the next day with travel information.

The patient says he and his wife canceled plans to move on to Florence the next day as they awaited the CDC's instructions.

The next day, instead of giving the couple travel arrangements, the man said a CDC staff member told him he'd need to turn himself into Italian health authorities the next morning and agree to go into isolation and treatment in that country for an indefinite period of time.

"I thought to myself: 'You're nuts.' I wasn't going to do that. They told me I had been put on the no-fly list and my passport was flagged," the man said.

The man said the CDC told him he could not fly aboard a commercial airliner with his disease. "We asked about the CDC jet and they said no, there wasn't funding in the budget to use the jet," he said.

Dr. Martin Cetron, director of the CDC's division of global migration and quarantine, did not respond to repeated requests for an interview. Cetron told The Associated Press: "He was told in no uncertain terms not to take a flight back."

CDC spokesman Tom Skinner said the agency was considering sending the CDC's jet to Italy to retrieve the man — when he disappeared and didn't meet Italian health authorities.

"We're sitting in a hotel room in Italy and we're looking at each other and we're on our honeymoon and the authorities are coming in hours," the man recalled. They made the decision to run.

To evade the no-fly list, which they assumed only involved jets bound for the United States, the man and wife flew into Canada and drove a car into the U.S. At every check of their passports, he said they feared being caught, but weren't.
but that the tests showing he had the most serious form of TB — XDR TB — only came back after he was in Europe. The test results came back on May 21, Fulton County officials said.

The man says he and his bride were in Rome on their honeymoon when they got a message to call the CDC. The CDC official said that they needed to cancel their trip and return home and that the CDC would call the next day with travel information.

The patient says he and his wife canceled plans to move on to Florence the next day as they awaited the CDC's instructions.

The next day, instead of giving the couple travel arrangements, the man said a CDC staff member told him he'd need to turn himself into Italian health authorities the next morning and agree to go into isolation and treatment in that country for an indefinite period of time.

"I thought to myself: 'You're nuts.' I wasn't going to do that. They told me I had been put on the no-fly list and my passport was flagged," the man said.

The man said the CDC told him he could not fly aboard a commercial airliner with his disease. "We asked about the CDC jet and they said no, there wasn't funding in the budget to use the jet," he said.

Dr. Martin Cetron, director of the CDC's division of global migration and quarantine, did not respond to repeated requests for an interview. Cetron told The Associated Press: "He was told in no uncertain terms not to take a flight back."

CDC spokesman Tom Skinner said the agency was considering sending the CDC's jet to Italy to retrieve the man — when he disappeared and didn't meet Italian health authorities.

"We're sitting in a hotel room in Italy and we're looking at each other and we're on our honeymoon and the authorities are coming in hours," the man recalled. They made the decision to run.

To evade the no-fly list, which they assumed only involved jets bound for the United States, the man and wife flew into Canada and drove a car into the U.S. At every check of their passports, he said they feared being caught, but weren't.

Idiotic bureaucratic bungling. CDC should know better, Homeland we already know is staffed and run by morons, but this agency knows the danger infectious diseases pose and they were worried about money. How about the people who could be potentially exposed to Mr. Speaker, did that ever cross the mind of the CDC? Apparently not sufficiently so till after the fact.

Andrew Speaker, The Centers for Disease Control and Homeland Security are today's Knuckleheads of the Day. Want to bet this is a 2007 Knucklehead of the year finalist?

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