Really? I mean, really?

As hundreds of commuters emerged from Amtrak and commuter trains at Union Station on a recent morning, an armed squad of men and women dressed in bulletproof vests made their way through the crowds.

The squad was not with the Washington police department or Amtrak’s police force, but was one of the Transportation Security Administration’s Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response squads — VIPR teams for short — assigned to perform random security sweeps to prevent terrorist attacks at transportation hubs across the United States.

As distressing as it is to imagine armed squads of airport screeners roaming our public places, could they have possibly chosen a sillier namer? VIPR? Really? I mean, if they're going to take security theater to that cliche extreme, why not just have the TSA agents played by marionettes?

My God, it's like our country is being run by 12-year-old boys.