Halfway through his five-year term, Obama appointee Randy Babbitt crashed his career as head of the Federal Aviation Administration. He failed to inform his boss that he had been caught driving down the wrong side of Lee Highway. An embarrassed U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood — who just a year ago initiated a national crackdown on drunk driving — didn’t find about about his underling’s arrest until he saw a press release 36 hours later. Babbitt was in charge of overseeing drug and alcohol testing for all the nation’s pilots and air traffic controllers. His flameout was a delicious irony for members of the FAA Whistleblowers Alliance, who noted that his tenure at FAA was marked by other scandals and embarrassments. Remember the time a commercial airliner couldn’t land at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport because the air traffic controller was taking a nap?

Babbitt was caught flat-footed when the media reported a 50 percent increase in air traffic control errors at some of the nation’s busiest airports. “The previous administration cooked the books on safety, illegally underreporting ground errors and near mid-air collisions,” former FAA inspector Rich Wyeroski told The Washington Examiner. But Babbitt didn’t come clean, says Wyeroski, who was fired nine years ago for reporting runway incursions at Long Island’s MacArthur Airport. Meanwhile, Babbitt refused to require transponders on gliders so other aircraft could “see” them, a relatively cheap safety fix.