…upon release of this latest Congressional report it will up to the American flying public to voice their concerns. After all, with air cargo holds remaining uninspected, TSA screeners recently failing tests for both weapons and bomb materials allowed through security points and hearing that identification of air marshals is continually at risk, should not sit well with flyers. As Sensenbrenner admits about the report,
The last commercial transport has rolled off the assembly line in southern California. There’s still a large aerospace industry there, but no more manufacturing, at least for transports.
Very few of the facilities that were built during the war to build airplanes still do so, if they exist at all. I remember when I worked in Downey at the old Consolidated-Vultee (which later became Convair) plant that was later purchased by North American (and became the space division during Apollo), you could still walk out in the back parking lot and see the lines from the old runway where the “Valiants” and other aircraft would roll out of the factory and take off over the dairy farms and orange groves. It’s all suburbia now, and the plant is being converted to film studios and other uses.
Boo Boo, the chicken who was revived after she was found floating face down in the family pond in February, died recently, said owner Jackie Calhoun. The fowl’s story was featured on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and the Animal Planet network.
“She had seizures,” Calhoun said. “I’ve come to the conclusion that’s what put her in the pond in the first place.”
The legend lives on, though:
“We incubated one of her eggs, and it hatched,” Calhoun said. “The chick has black and white markings like Boo Boo’s.”
When it came to incompetence in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Jonah Goldberg notes that the malperformance of the federal government was dwarfed by that of the media:
…virtually all of the gripping stories from Katrina were untrue. All of those stories about, in Paula Zahn
That (as a result of reading a collection of dirty jokes in my parent’s bathroom in the sixties) is what I always ask when hearing or reading about cocktails.
…in this post, I see that I need to write an essay titled “Why Diogenes‘ Search Is Futile, And Why It Doesn’t Matter.”
So much to do, so little time. And I should note, that the man himself knew that his search was futile. Of course, some will inevitably argue that this fable is more about human nature than about whether or not truth exists. And they may be right.
Yeah, I know the title’s almost redundant. Anyway, Glenn Reynolds has a roundup of links on new-found respect for freedom from search and seizure on the part of the House.
And no, I’m not a born-again critic of the NSA (though there’s always been much to criticize them for, particularly when it comes to wasting the taxpayers’ money on failed black programs and spending sprees). I just think that Newt and others doth protest too much in support of their obviously corrupt colleagues. As Glenn notes, I’ll bet you’d find a lot more nefarious doings with unannounced searches of Congressional offices than from 435 random citizens.
[Late evening update]
For those who don’t think that Congressman Jefferson is getting fair treatment, here is Byron York’s response.