Fly Naked?

Almost a year ago, most citizens of the great state of Arizona breathed a sigh of relief as Janet Napolitano left her then current job as the governor and became the Secretary of Homeland Security. She had refused to work to secure our southern border and she had run up crippling debt for this state.

It seems that Secretary Janet lives in one universe and the rest of us live in another.

And, it seems she still is because yesterday the Secretary declared that “the system worked”, The system she was talking about was airport screening in the wake of the terrorist attack on the flight from Amsterdam to Detroit.

A conservative estimate says that we spend 50 billion dollars a year on these programs.

If she’s right that, “everything worked as it should,” then we must be spending that kind of money in order to train random Dutchmen to gang-tackle a demented black Muslim who is trying to set fire to his knickers in an airport lavatory. And, Oh by the way, there were no air marshals on this flight. Thank G-d for throat-choking Dutchmen!

Let’s take a closer look at this event. And for those from Lake Havasu, I’ll put it in little easy-to-read paragraphs.

The man is a Muslim.

He was no penniless indigent. His father owns a second home in London worth between 2.5 and 4 million GBP.

His own father warned the US Embassy in Nigeria about his son.

The son boasted that he had been trained by Al-Queda.

He bought a one-way ticket and paid $2800 in cash.

He had no passport.

He had no luggage.

He had been refused entry to the UK because they deemed his application was fraudulent. And they placed him on a “Persons of Interest” watch list. This information was transmitted to this country and agencies such as the CIA, the FBI, and Homeland Security.

Now, I realize that there are more than 500,000 people on that list but add in the other data points and it shouldn’t take too long to trigger a red flag and flares as well.

I went to amazon.com earlier this morning and they told me immediately what I’d bought and what I may like to buy. And so, one is bound to ask if they, a commercial company, can know that much about me, why wouldn’t Obama's agencies, with all the computer power at their command, be able to at least point a suspecting finger at the “knicker bomber”?

Instead though, what I think we’ll get is an extension of the new regulations which dictate that bathroom visits are out when one is closer than 1 hour from arrival and that one must be in one’s seat with hands visible.

I remember being in a class in Junior School and one of the disciplinary measures was that the whole class had to sit with “hands on heads” until your arms ached and the “Go Home” bell was long silent.

When Richard Reid tried to set fire to his sneakers he started the ritual of shoe removal at airport security. There was even a concern that gel-filled bras might be suspect at one point. Now it's underwear as well and the possible outcome is way too frightening to contemplate ..........

Perhaps what is needed is that we’ll all be shipped as freight in a box. Or, has that already happened?

I suspect that Nappy will be gone by March but in the meantime,

Thank Heavens for the Flying Dutchman.

I hope there’s one on your next flight!