the amorphous blob of nothingness

otherwise known as the Department of Homeland Security... "Red Alert" , from motherjones.com :

Hamstrung by special interests, staffed with B-team political appointees, and crippled by a lack of funding and political support, DHS is a premier example of how the administration's misplaced priorities—and its obsession with Iraq—have come at the direct expense of homeland security. From my vantage point, standing for the first time outside its bleak, back-alley entrance, DHS seemed cruelly cut down to size, more like a minor, ill-favored bureaucratic outpost than the largest government agency in America. That it could be both at once spoke volumes about how cynically the political process in our nation's capital can work.