The file with my name on it in the Federal Aviation Administration Eastern District office seems to be growing.

Two weeks ago, I opined on the (in)-effeciency of our federal government after I received a letter from the FAA’s Hazardous Materials Branch Manager Stephen Joseph telling me I may have been in violation of the FAA’s safety codes because I MAY have carried a lighter in my checked baggage on a flight from upstate New York back to Jackson.

I asked Mr. Joseph for a response — preferably via e-mail so as not to cost the taxpayers any more money.

I received said answer on Wednesday, but not by e-mail.

The same exact letter arrived in the mailbox, only this one said I may have been carrying my lighter on a June 7 flight to Jackson and not the June 2 flight I actually took.

Seeing as I worked the news desk on Saturday night June 6 and didn’t get off work until after midnight, I would have had to sprint to Jackson to catch the red-eye to New York, landed, collected my bags, checked back in and returned to Jackson hours after landing.

No visits with Mom and Dad. No beverages at my favorite hometown watering hole. Only a wave to the fine folks at the TSA and a return trip through security would have been on the itinerary. I may be crazy, Mr. Joseph, but newspapermen do not make the kind of money that would allow a 1,600-mile trip North and a return trip South on the same day.

According to the FAA, I carried a lighter that they cannot prove I carried and took a round-trip flight to New York on the same day — a feat that certainly defies at least 3/4 of the laws of physics.

Efficiency at the federal level is mind-boggling.

But wait! The report is dated July 13, 2009, and it arrived in my mailbox on Aug. 5, 2009, via the United States Postal Service, another well-oiled, federally funded model of efficiency. (By its own accounting, the Postal Service projects a net loss of more than $7 billion at fiscal year-end).

I fully expect another letter in three weeks from the Western Branch of the Hazardous Materials Department claiming I carried a book of matches on a flight to Walla Walla, Wash., on the same day I visited dentist Don Jackson on Mission 66.

God Save the Republic.