I’d like to know what they got out of the guy before he lawyered up. There seems to be an assumption that he waited until the end of the flight in the hope that he would scatter airplane parts and jet fuel (not that there would be that much at the end of a flight) over the southeast Michigan landscape, or perhaps the airport itself. Call it the poor man’s hijacking. I assume that this is the thinking (to use a generous word) behind the rule about sitting with an empty lap for the last hour of flight.
But the chances of a bomb taking down an aircraft by blowing a hole in the fuselage are much higher when it’s at altitude, and more likely to pop like a balloon. Even if it had worked as designed (again, to use a generous word) it might not have brought down the plane at the lower altitude.
What if the lateness of the attempt was just that it took him that long to work up the gumption to do the deed? He had the whole flight to think about it, and it was almost over, and he finally realized that if he was going to do it, he had to do it now, and procrastination time was over? If so, it’s just one more reason to think the new rules imbecilic.
If the president is so big on change (and hope) here, why is he so seemingly averse to it in Iran? And why was he so quick to declare the Honduran regime illegitimate, but remains unwilling to do so for the Tehran tyrants?
Does anyone imagine that regime change in Iran would give us something worse? Other than, of course, the president won’t get to continue to futilely show his diplomatic chops by naively negotiating with this one?
Why do we fail to detect or defeat the guilty, and why do we do so well at collective punishment of the innocent? The answer to the first question is: Because we can’t—or won’t. The answer to the second question is: Because we can. The fault here is not just with our endlessly incompetent security services, who give the benefit of the doubt to people who should have been arrested long ago or at least had their visas and travel rights revoked. It is also with a public opinion that sheepishly bleats to be made to “feel safe.” The demand to satisfy that sad illusion can be met with relative ease if you pay enough people to stand around and stare significantly at the citizens’ toothpaste. My impression as a frequent traveler is that intelligent Americans fail to protest at this inanity in case it is they who attract attention and end up on a no-fly list instead. Perfect.
It will continue until we demand our rights again. And unfortunately, this is a bi-partisan problem. This idiotic philosophy applied in the last administration as well. It’s a natural tendency of bureaucrats of any stripe.
Also, I was listening to some talk radio today in the car (Prager) and it occurred to me that people have this strange notion that “safe” is a binary condition. Something is safe or it is not. But it’s not. As I’ve said in other contexts (what a mess the human spaceflight program is), there is no safety this side of the dirt. Every decision you make, every action you take, carries some level of risk. Each one must be balanced against the expected benefit. When someone asks the president if it’s “safe to fly,” he should use it as a teachable moment. But he won’t.
While a near majority of private-sector employees see the economy as deteriorating, the opposite is true of public-sector employees. Forty-six percent of government workers think the economy is improving.
Meanwhile, the government continues to make war on the real economy, where actual wealth is produced.
Some New Year’s predictions from Victor Davis Hanson. He’s lot more optimistic than I am on the ability of this administration to correct course, or learn from mistakes.
He also takes Matthew Yglesias to school. Though that’s not hard — a typical eighth grader could do it.
I was never a big John Ashcroft fan, but this administration has achieved the impossible — made me nostalgic for the Bush administration. Another lesson here is not to give Democrats named “Janet” major cabinet posts.
It was a year of Hope — at first in the sense of “I feel hopeful!” and later in the sense of “I hope this year ends soon!”
It was also a year of Change, especially in Washington, where the tired old hacks of yesteryear finally yielded the reins of power to a group of fresh, young, idealistic, new-idea outsiders such as Nancy Pelosi. As a result Washington, rejecting “business as usual,” finally stopped trying to solve every problem by throwing billions of taxpayer dollars at it and instead started trying to solve every problem by throwing trillions of taxpayer dollars at it.
If we can defeat this new advance of totalitarianism on the Hill in the next couple months, it will be due to them. And I hope that this is the end of Max Baucus’ political career. Not to mention many others’ of course…