Government Behaving Reasonably

At least that's all I inferred from article at CNN:  Thousands of Sex Offenders Received U.S. Passports.

According to a GAO report (requested by some worthless senators), the State Department issued about 5,000 passports to sex offenders last year even though:

"Federal statutes authorize the Secretary of State to deny issuance of a passport in certain circumstances, such as while an individual is imprisoned or on parole or supervised release for a conviction for international drug trafficking or sex tourism or is in arrearages for child support... However, there is currently no comprehensive program to deny passports to applicants who are registered sex offenders."

Okay, so the Secretary of State does deny passports based on "a conviction for... sex tourism," yet it is report-worthy that passports are issued for other people?  YAWN.  This report is shocking neither in raw numbers (5,000 out of 300,000,000 people in the United States) nor substance.  

Some people might advocate denying passports to all sex offenders, but that seems unduly harsh to me.  Considering the sex-crime-mania that inflicts our criminal justice system already (see here and here), denying passports would be overkill.