Ted Kennedy put on No Fly List

Recently, lance smith posted:

I'm not the biggest fan of Kennedy but he raises a good point- if it
took a senator weeks and many calls to get off the list, what would it
take and how long would it take an ordinary American to get off the
list?

It may not be possible.

Here's the link and the text of the Reuters story:

How can some of this just "slip by" people?

A Kennedy spokesman said the whole thing had resulted from a simple
error and had not been politically motivated.

How would a Kennedy spokesman know this? It sounds like a political
appeasement to me.

Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge personally called Kennedy "to
make sure that the situation was remedied," said a spokeswoman for
Ridge's department.

Why would Ridge have to check with Kennedy to make sure of such a thing?
He should have complete access to the system that created this "simple
error", and should know for a fact whether the situation (obviously not
the ability to make such "simple errors") was remedied. Calling the victim
of such errors should yield no useful information whatsoever, as the
victim would only know whether they were stopped on a particular flight,
not whether the "situation was remedied". Are we really that gullible a
people?

Neil