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The bottom line is how do we best provide for the security of the traveling public in light of a determined enemy who is adept at constructing well-designed, well-concealed devices which would not show up in a walk-through metal detector? We're trying to employ the best technology to identify any possible threat.

Today, barely 5 percent of all containers coming into the United States through our ports are scanned.

I've been focused on detecting nuclear terrorism at ports, in cargo containers, and I developed and built detectors that are extremely cheap and also very sensitive. My other big development is a system to produce medical isotopes that are injected into patients and used to diagnose and treat cancer.

Last year, customs officials screened only five percent of the 11 million cargo containers entering the United States. That rate is both unacceptable and dangerous to our national and economic interests.

The Department of Homeland Security is a strategic feel good measure. It's going to be the Department of Agriculture for the 21st century. TSA - thousands standing around.

Increased and better screening for explosives is necessary - and Congress should fund it and TSA should implement it as quickly as possible - however that screening doesn't reduce the risk posed by a trained terrorist with an unconventional weapon.

In South Texas, we understand how vital port security is and we fear the day a weapon of mass destruction could be brought into a U.S. port in a container and cause hundreds of thousands of casualties.

Terrorists can utilize any vulnerability in the system and that would include outbound shipments.

Everything TSA does is reactionary - first they ban the box cutters, then of course you have to take your shoes off, then you have to take the liquids out, now we have to be patted down in our private areas because of the diaper bomber.