Having just experienced the infuriating experience of strangers rifling through my personal effects at the Reno Airport parking garage, when all I wanted to do was pick up my daughter, I find the shoe-bomb event deplorable, but nearly laughable. I suppose that I could have kept circling the airport until she landed and came dragging her luggage into the middle of the street, but it seems more appropriate to urge the vote-seeking, muddle-headed politicians to amend their ways.
D.C. lawyer, columnist Ann Coulter once observed that "unless airlines are going to require all passengers and crew to fly naked, with no carry-on luggage, keeping weapons off airplanes is a pipe dream." More to the point, in his "discourses," Machiavelli points out that "security measures that hurt, threaten or humiliate citizens engender hatred on top of contempt."
In more modern terms, Boston v. Professor Angelo M. Codeville reminds us that "America fought Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan and the Soviet Union without treating the public as potential enemies." He goes on to point out that nothing but incompetence can halt the terrorists, "because the task is beyond even the best imaginable system." Where is the ACLU when one needs them?
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