Air Marshals back in the sky

At least the government is gettig a bit better about admitting when they've made a mistake. First the Pentagon's "bet on upcoming terrorist events" plan got scrapped within hours of it becoming public, and now, less than a day after it was announced that the Transportation Security Administration would be cutting hours for Air Marshals and dropping them from any flights that would require overnight lodging (which meant they wouldn't have been on the most vulnerable flights), they've reversed the decision and rescheduled the air marshals for all previously scheduled flights.

The Department of Homeland Security on Wednesday blamed the confusion on a mixup in communication and said the department had been working with air marshal officials on Monday to correct the situation.

"America should know that every air marshal that we have is being deployed, and additional resources are being directed to that very critical mission," Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said Wednesday in a speech. Part of the plan to add resources includes a recall of 100 air marshals now doing other jobs with TSA, a spokesman for the said.

The dropping of marshals from flights that many experts consider to be at the highest risk of attack came to light Tuesday when several air marshals contacted by MSNBC.com confirmed that they were alerted via a "text message" on their TSA-issued cell phones to check their schedules for changes.