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

Maricopa County Sheriff "Crazy" Joe Arpaio's department has been keeping two sets of books (Generally not a sign of upright conduct) to allow it to misspend $34,000,000 (in the department's estimate; county administrators think it might be $80 million) of county money designated (by the voters) for detentions.

"On the eve of a major national holiday and less than one year after al-Qaida's failed attack last Christmas Day, it is irresponsible for a group to suggest travelers opt out of the very screening that may prevent an attack using non-metallic explosives," said TSA Administrator John Pistole. (Houston Chronicle.)Pistole is responding to National Opt-Out Day, a nice little bit of civil disobedience in which people are

Follow me here.Under the Texas Penal Code, A person commits [the felony of Indecency With a Child] if, with a child younger than 17 years of age, whether the child is of the same or opposite sex, the person:(1)  engages in sexual contact with the child or causes the child to engage in sexual contact; or(2)  with intent to arouse or gratify the sexual desire of any

Don't like the idea of choosing between a full-body scanner and an "enhanced patdown" by a TSA thug? You don't have to avoid flying; you just have to avoid flying out of the airports that use full-body scanners (list below from Jaunted.com as of 16 September 2010; check back there before you make your reservations—there are more every day).Americans aren't yet ready to take up arms and

If I were not a lethally generous guy, I would not be writing this. If I thought that what we do was a zero-sum game, in which anything that makes my colleagues better somehow hurts me, I would keep this little gem to myself; I might even quietly put the word out that the book was a waste of time.  But that’s not the sort of guy