The Department of Homeland Security budget turns down a request from Obama to buy 275 more scanners.

Your morning transportation speed-read:

Air traffic controllers haven't been just sleeping on the job. They've also been making more errors.

House Transportation Committee Chairman John Mica (R-Fla.) is pushing Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) to accept another railway in central Florida.

They can't decide what type of trains they want for high-speed rail in Texas.

Another bus crashed in Maryland.

Likely Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney compared the National Labor Relations Board's lawsuit to stop Boeing from building a new plant in South Carolina to the federal healthcare reform law.
 
While delivering a widely watched speech in Michigan Thursday, the former Massachusetts governor called the NLRB’s lawsuit "a power grab from states, with the federal government saying we know better than the state."
 
"That was the most recent [example]," Romney said during his remarks at the University of Michigan. "The most egregious example was the healthcare plan itself."

Eight of the top 10 cities with the highest percentage of jobs being close to public transportation are on the West Coast, according to a study released Thursday by the conservative Brookings Institute.

Despite the conventional wisdom that transit is more readily available in the Northeast, cities in Hawaii, California, Arizona, New Mexico and Utah all rank higher than any city in the Northeast in the percentage of jobs located within a 90-minute commute on public transportation, the study found. The highest percentages belonged to Honolulu, Hawaii, and Salt Lake City, Utah, which had 59.8 and 58.9 percent, respectively.

A big caveat, however: among largest cities with at least 500,000 people, the actual number of jobs within a 90-minute commute using transit is higher than all of those cities. For instance, New York City alone had 3,539,294 jobs its citizens could get to quickly on a train or a bus.

Similarly, Washington, D.C., had 1,148,904 jobs within a 90-minute transit ride, tying New York's percentage at 36.6.

Boeing Vice President J. Michael Luttig told a Senate panel Thursday that the National Labor Relations Board has exceeded its authority by trying to block his company from building a new plant in South Carolina instead of its home state of Washington.

The NLRB is trying to win concessions for Boeing employees the union was not able to win, Luttig said during a hearing of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. The problem is, that is not the NLRB's job, Luttig told lawmakers Thursday.

"At bottom, the acting general counsel is seeking to change radically the balance between management and unions struck by the NLRA, as the Act has been interpreted for the last 75 years," Luttig said in remarks prepared for the committee. 

The White House will not comment on the National Labor Relations Board's complaint against Boeing because the panel is an "independent agency," a spokesman said this week.

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and several GOP senators have argued that the NLRB's effort to block Boeing from locating a new plant in South Carolina is an assault on capitalism.

South Carolina is a "right-to-work" state, with laws on the books that generally prohibit mandatory union membership.

The NLRB has argued that Boeing wants to build the plant in South Carolina to retaliate for labor strikes in Washington state. Republicans say the lawsuit shows the Obama administration is too cozy with unions.

White House press secretary Jay Carney on Wednesday said the matter is between Boeing and the NLRB.

"Well, it’s obviously been in the news, so we are aware of it, but I would refer any questions about it to the NLRB because it is an independent agency, and we do not get involved in particular enforcement matters of independent agencies," Carney told reporters.

Your morning transportation speed-read:

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood says Amtrak already has a terrorist watch list.

California's state auditor is saying not so fast on a proposed high-speed railway there.

Three-hundred Tampa area students are losing their school buses.

House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.) thinks Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University should locate its third campus in Illinois.

The unlikely duo of Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton is featured in a new ad campaign from the American Road and Transportation Builders Association and the American Public Transportation Association.

The groups are using the former presidents from opposite ends of the political spectrum to try to build bipartisan support for a six-year transportation spending bill. The radio spot features Reagan making the case for spending more on transportation. 

"The state of our transportation system affects our commerce, our economy and our future," Reagan says at the beginning of the radio commercial, which has begun airing on WTOP radio in Washington.

The Transportation Security Administration is again defending itself for applying its airport screening techniques.

This time, however, the passenger was an 8-month-old baby.

A photo posted online by a passenger at the Kansas City International Airport of a baby receiving one of the controversial TSA pat downs has sparked such a stir that the agency responded Wednesday on its website.

The child's stroller triggered explosive alarms, so the officers "followed proper current screening procedures" and checked the whole family, the agency said. The baby - and his parents - "very cooperative and were on the way to their gate in no time," the TSA blog said.