I'm not normally really big on labor actions, but I hope that the airline pilots strike over this stupidity. My only consolation is that it would probably be even worse if Gore were president.

Rand:

Be upset about the decision as much as want, as I am, but you aren't possibly saying that you're surprised by the decision, are you?

No, just disappointed. Hope springs eternal...

And it could be worse how?

You really can't imagine it being worse?

Let's suppose that you fell into a coma on November 1, 2000 and just woke up. Someone told you about Sept. 11 and the current state of airport "security":

1. Pilots cannot be armed, even with non-lethal "weapons"
like stun guns.
2. Pilots and passengers are harrassed over objects
such as nail clippers.
3. Meanwhile, real weapons like X-acto knives, guns
and grenades make it through security.
4. There is no attempt to use a terrorist profile. Old ladies
are searched with the same intensity as foreign young men.
5. The Secretary of Transportation, who is a Democrat,
is proud of this state of affairs and says that it would be
wrong to perform any profiling.
6. Airport security has been nationalized.

Now given the preceding information, what would be
your best guess as to who won the 2000 presidential
election?

And you never did answer my question. What would
be worse?

Geez, that's depressing. Now I'm going to actually have to hurt my head to figure out how it could be worse.

Well, it could be worse in other areas than airline security...

While most of airport security is rightly derided, I actually think it is a good idea to randomly search passengers (#4). Why does everyone think terrorists won't adjust and start recruiting grannies, too? Terrorists don't live in a culture made up entirely of young men. They could get others who don't fit the profile to do the dirty work. The other reason is my Mother-In-Law. She is a perfectly nice, respectable old lady type. She will talk to anybody, anywhere at anytime. She is also a bit oblivious to what is going on around her and what is going on with the 5 different bags she brings on each flight (yes, she does get away with it because she feels entitled as a senoir citizen and most people accomadate that attitude). It would be so easy for someone to distract her with chit chat while someone else slips a package in her bags without her even noticing. Or take someone like me, traveling with 3 kids, talk about attention deficient disorder! Just find a mom with more than 1 kid under 5! This is probably not the very best method, but entirely doable and I recall a terrorist who tried something similar with a pregnant girlfriend but the authorities caught up with her before she got on a plane unknowingly transporting a bomb (details a little hazy but I know it was in another country). This doesn't mean that we shouldn't profile for the most likely suspects (young men from middle-Eastern Islamic countries) but we shouldn't jettison the random approach, either.

I agree that if we're going to search, that it should be at least somewhat random. Someone could also slip something into a kid's clothes.

My objection is to the entire philosophy that the passengers can, or should be totally disarmed. Once no one has any weapons, then the strongest men aboard effectively rule the aircraft. All of the emphasis seems to be on preventing what happened on September 11, which is never going to happen again, because the passengers won't let it, with or without nail clippers and nose-hair trimmers. It's a massive waste of time and resources, and gives us a false sense of security.

And this idiotic decision to not allow the pilots to be armed is just more of the same insanity.

You have to wonder if somewhere in the world today there is a group of people well trained in unarmed combat pacticing in a mockup of an airliner's interior. Many common object that are still welcomed as carry ons can very effective weapons in trained hands.

Provided they can storm the cockpit and quickly seize control they would have a highly defensible position for the short period needed until reaching a good target from any major airport on either coast.

Strong cockpit doors will not suffice. The piloting crew will not endure lengthy flights sealed in and only a moment's lapse is needed.