While the media is doing its best to dismiss any concerns over placing a modern-day Jimmy Hoffa in control of the nation’s airline security, we should remember that Erroll Southers — Obama’s TSA chief nominee — doesn’t exactly have a clean past.

Southers, seen here, was censured by the FBI for misusing his power. Reports the Washington Post:

Erroll Southers, who was serving as an FBI special agent at the time of the censure, asked a co-worker’s husband who worked for the San Diego Police Department to run a background check on his ex-wife’s boyfriend.

In his capacity as a special agent for the FBI, of course. That move earned him a formal censure from the agency, and it proved that Southers was willing to abuse his position of power for personal reasons.

And yet here’s Southers, a favorite of union bosses, being nominated by Barack Obama to head the TSA. And the media is outraged — outraged — that a Republican senator doesn’t simply fall in love with this guy.