The memo, which actually takes the form of an administrative directive, appears to be the product of undated but recent high level meetings between Napolitano, John Pistole, head of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA),and one or more of Obama’s national security advisors. This document officially addresses those who are opposed to, or engaged in the disruption of the implementation of the enhanced airport screening procedures as “domestic

“I just want to arrive safely, and they are welcome to take pictures of me, my wife, and my daughters.” That’s from the comments to Ruth Marcus’s Don’t Touch My Junk? Grow Up, America.I can’t make this stuff up:

Suppose that it’s 1 January 2001, and you know that at some point in the next 12 months terrorists will take down four airplanes, killing more than 500 passengers. You have a job that requires you to travel from Houston to Newark at least once and up to twelve times. By road, you live 20 miles from the Houston airport and work 10 miles from the Newark

Tom DeLay has been convicted of Money Laundering and Conspiracy to Commit Money Laundering.He'll be going to the court for punishment; range is 2-20 on the conspiray and 5-life on the substantive offense. I think probation's a safe bet.

What's another word for unquestioning compliance? Submission. And what's the Arabic word for submission? Islam. Islam is about submission to the will of God, but Islamic fundamentalists want people to submit to what they say is the will of God. So—assuming that they are no more inerrant than the rest of us—what they want is unquestioning compliance with them. So in a way, when you think about

LA Times Editorial Board to the public: "Shut up and be scanned." I kid you not. (Matt Welch at Reason has collated a list of other editorial boards publicly supporting TSA's new "Scan or Grope" policy.)Aside from "scanners are safe" and "Scan or Grope keeps us safe," here's the LA TImes's analysis of the objections to Scan-or-Grope:There's no bright line to indicate where our quest for security

Quoth a TSA screener talking to Flying With Fish: “There is a big difference between how I pat passengers down and a molester molesting people.”Let’s try that on for size.

With Gaterapegate, the TSA has ticked at least four of the five boxes in Moral Foundations Theory (I mentioned the theory, but I see that I never wrote the promised followup):Harm / care;Fairness / reciprocity;Ingroup / loyalty;Authority / respect; andPurity / sanctity.Harm / care?

I'm sitting in my home office with the window open. Some lady just walked by with her daughter, about four years old. After they passed, I—sitting inside, twenty feet back from the sidewalk—smelled a strong odor of burning tobacco.Yech. If I can smell it, that little girl's lungs (she was between the smoker and me) are full of it.Just yech.

This is one of those days when there are too many shiny things to write about. Ooo that looks like fun … but wait, so does that! no, that! It’s like trying to eat an elephant. You know how you eat an elephant, right? One bite at a time.The topic, broadly, is the Transportation Security Agency and the porno scanner / molestation choice it has given those