The answer is a resolute ‘no.’

Instead, the Obama administration hopes to combat infection aboard U.S. flights by encouraging hand-washing in the air. Dealing with sick passengers will be left to individual airlines, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said in an interview with NBC’s “Today” show.

“They have that question with other people who show up and look like they’re sick and had it even before the swine flu was spoken about,” Napolitano said.

“What we’ve been meeting with the airlines about is making sure that hand-washing is easily accessible and that those kinds of things are available on planes for travelers.”

H1N1 infection is expected to balloon in the Northern Hemisphere as cooler weather sets in this autumn, raising the danger of major disruptions for businesses and governments as large numbers of workers call in sick.

That alone could pose national security problems, given that the U.S. government won’t have vaccines available until after infection begins to take hold.

Worst-case predictions suggest that between 30,000 and 90,000 people could die from the swine flu in the United States while up to 1.8 million flu patients could crowd U.S. hospital wards.

Advisers to President Barack Obama have asked the government to speed up the availability of vaccine. But vaccinations are not likely to be ready before October.

Meanwhile, that leaves hand-washing as the Obama administration’s frontline defense against swine flu’s spread. To promote the habit, Washington has turned to Sesame Street’s Elmo, the PBS children’s show character who has befriended decades of toddlers with his high-pitched voice, crayon and jingle bells piano playing.  

“Come on! Wash your hands with Elmo! Wash! Wash! Wash!” the fuzzy red Sesame Street ‘monster’ says in a public service announcement released this week.

The same goes for those way up there in the Wild Blue Yonder.

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Photo credit: Reuters/Rebecca Cook (Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano)

Mixing politics with national security? Maybe under Obama, but not under Bush. Well, not exactly.

That summarizes Tom Ridge in an interview on ABC’s “Good Morning America.” Former President George W. Bush’s first homeland security secretary took on the Obama administration’s controversial review of Bush-era interrogations and his own published worries about politics and the threat of terrorism.

Ridge was asked what he made of former Vice President Dick Cheney’s public assault against the decision by U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to name a special prosecutor to look deeper into harsh Bush-era interrogations of captured terrorism suspects including accused Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was waterboarded 183 times.

“I think he’s right, pure and simple,” Ridge told ABC.

In fact, the former Republican governor of Pennsylvania suggested the Justice Department investigation should itself be outlawed.

“To go back and investigate — criminally investigate — what these men were asked to do believing at the time that they were empowered to do it and it was consistent with the law, I think it’s wrong. It’s chilling and it’s inappropriate,” he said.

“To suggest four or five years later that what they did was criminal, I think that’s criminal,” Ridge said.

But Ridge, 64, tried to downplay the controversy sparked by his own upcoming book.

In his new book, “The Test of Our Times: America Under Siege,” Ridge says he worried that election politics might have motivated some top Bush administration officials to argue for a heightened threat level at the time.

“A lot of people are hyperventilating about that passage,” Ridge said.

“At the end of the day, I had to be absolutely sure that we’re on the right path. Process worked. We didn’t go up. And it was designed so that nobody could pressure anybody to do anything. A consensus was reached. We didn’t go up.”

But he didn’t take back the assertion that Bush’s political interests might have had a role in the discussion.

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Photo credit: Reuters/Kevin Lamarque (Ridge announcing his resignation in 2004)

The nation’s first Homeland Security secretary is airing some dirty laundry from the Bush administration: He says he was pushed to raise the terror alert level on the eve of the 2004 presidential election.

The level was never raised but Tom Ridge reveals how threats of terrorism were used to influence voters in his upcoming book ”The Test of Our Times: America Under Siege … and How We Can Be Safe Again”.

According to the promotion material released by the book’s publisher, Ridge said the DHS was pressured to connect homeland security to the international “war on terror”. He also said he effectively thwarted a plan to raise the alert level before the 2004 election, which Bush won.

Several other Bush administration officials disagree with Ridge’s characterization. Former Homeland Security adviser Frances Fragos Townsend called it “way off base”. She said there was a debate about raising the alert level at that time but politics were never discussed at that meeting.

Politico quotes former White House chief of staff Andy Card saying the Bush administration was very disciplined in its efforts to make sure politics did not influence national security decisions.

So were politics involved? What do you think?

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Photo credit: REUTERS/Mike Segar (Ridge addresses 2008 Republican National Convention)

After the Obama team’s big announcement on health care and an even bigger deficit, now comes the hard part — actually sitting down and figuring out how much it’s going to cost, and how to make it cost less. President Barack Obama’s first public appearance today is a round-table discussion with business leaders on cutting employer health care costs.

Later, behind closed doors at the White House, Obama and Vice President Joe Biden meet with Commanding General Raymond Odierno, the head of the Multi-National Force-Iraq, and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Chris Hill. Then the president meets with Defense Secretary Robert Gates, one day after Gates replaced the top U.S. Afghanistan commander.

In congressional action, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano faces questions about her department’s 2010 budget from both sides of Capitol Hill. Lisa Jackson, who heads the Environmental Protection Agency, also faces budget questioning from the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

Despite talk of early signs of economic recovery, a U.S. Federal Reserve official sounded a note of caution. Things are better than they were, but the crisis isn’t over yet, Atlanta Federal Reserve President Dennis Lockhart said: “I believe that conditions are now calmer but it is too soon to breathe easy.”

As if to confirm this, the U.S. trade gap widened in March for the first time in seven months — but not as much as some analysts had feared. So though the news isn’t good, it isn’t as bad as it could be.

Perhaps this counts as one of those “green shoots” of economic recovery we keep hearing about? You tell us: is this a sign the economy is turning?

Photo credit: REUTERS/Jim Young (President Obama in the White House Rose Garden, April 28, 2009)

Officials from the Bush and Obama administrations crossed paths at the White House Tuesday to participate in a homeland security exercise.

The scary hypothetical scenario was how the federal government should respond to a terrorist attack using improvised explosive devices on the transportation infrastructure and other economic targets in major U.S. cities.

They also looked at responses to other disasters like pandemic flu and hurricanes during briefings, including time spent in the White House basement “Situation Room” where  national security crises are handled.

“As Republicans and Democrats, we disagree on a lot of policy issues, but we agree completely that we want this new team to be as successful as they possibly can be, especially in the areas of national and homeland security,” Josh Bolten, Bush’s chief of staff , said before the exercise began.  “And this morning’s activities, I think, will be an important contributor to that. ”

Both sides were definitely playing nice.

“I’ve now been over with Josh one way or another four separate times.  I’m going miss you,” Rahm Emanuel, who will be Obama’s chief of staff, said standing next to Bolten before reporters at the White House.

Reporters were assured that the security drill did not involve any kind of competition between the Bush and Obama teams. 

And so it goes in the post-election era, where each side is patting the other on the back for a smooth transition.

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Photo credit: Reuters/Jason Reed (Emanuel, left, and Bolten outside the White House Tuesday)