TSA’s Theater of the Absurd: The Bigger Picture

This post at The Corner makes a good point:

The issue at the root of this controversy is so vitally important — and affects so many different aspects of our society — that perhaps it merits another turn of discussion.

What we see at the root of the TSA controversy is the same social pathology we see in such disparate things as the latest gun-control proposals, the disastrously costly new EPA regulations, and the ten-thousand-fold explosion in products liability.

Our society has embraced an absolute — and absolutely insane — form of the precautionary principle. There is no pretense of even a minimally rational cost-benefit analysis. If there is a vanishingly small chance that some onerous precautionary measure might make it difficult to hijack one plane at some point in the next 100 years, then by all means let’s impose that onerous burden on millions of American passengers every year for the rest of time. I laughed when I read Mark Steyn’s vision of a TSA “obergropinfuhrer” poking around in your pumpkin pie, but actually most TSA security measures are just as laughable — and just as depressing.

What has put a stop to virtually all airline hijackings is the reinforcement of cockpit doors. That is a common sense measure that should have been taken decades ago and which would have prevented 9/11 all by itself. Most of the rest of what TSA does is foolishness. As Mark suggests, airport security has foiled not a single terrorist attack. TSA has an unbroken record of false positives. Profiling and robust intelligence operations abroad are what actually protect people — by identifying ahead of time the one-in-ten billion airline passengers who is actually dangerous.

Putting grannies from northern Wisconsin through state-sponsored sexual assaults is justified on the basis of fairness. But in reality, it is nothing more than the shameful theatrics of a fatally insecure people who, having abandoned the bold leadership to which God and the world had called them, now recoils from every shadow, like King Lear on the heath.

Muslims Enforcing Sharia On The Streets Of London

Screen shot of posters:

7th Circuit Upholds Entirety of Scott Walker's Collective-Bargaining Reforms

via Althouse:

"The district court invalidated Act 10's recertification and payroll deduction provisions, but upheld the statute's limitation on collective bargaining. We now uphold Act 10 in its entirety."

Voting to uphold the law in its entirety were Judges Joel M. Flaum and William J. Bauer. Flaum wrote the opinion.

Judge David F. Hamilton dissented in part, saying he believed part of the collective bargaining law violated the First Amendment. Hamilton argued the state could not bar some unions from having their dues deducted from paychecks while it allowed police and fire unions to do so. ADDED: Here's the opinion PDF.

AND: The panel said it's well-settled that "use of the state’s payroll systems to collect union dues is a state subsidy of speech that requires only viewpoint neutrality." The law didn't target any particular viewpoints. It subsidized the speech of public safety unions but not other public employee unions, and the unions had argued that the speech of the groups that were subsidized would be more favorable to the party that supported the legislation and so Act 10 wasn't genuinely viewpoint neutral, but only the dissenting judge agreed.

Police looking for armed robber in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles PJs

The Puyallup (WA) Police Department is looking for the man who allegedly robbed a convenience store while armed with a knife and decked out in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles pajama pants.

According to the Tacoma/Pierce County Crime Stoppers, the man entered the 7-Eleven in the 900 block of South Meridian Street shortly before 2 a.m. Jan. 5, jumped onto the counter and demanded cash.

After getting his money, the masked man hightailed it out of there in his Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles pajama pants, according to the Crime Stoppers.

Non-Union Workers Excluded from Hurricane Sandy Cleanup

In New Jersey, where Governor Chris Christie has said that relief measures for Hurricane Sandy should be “above politics,” non-union workers are now excluded from participating in cleanup and rebuilding efforts. That policy took effect when the New Jersey state senate voted on Monday to expand an existing labor-agreement law that has been on the books since 2002. According to the Jersey Journal, highways, bridges, pumping stations, and water and sewage treatment plants were not covered under the existing law, but the new bill includes them.

via The Corner.