Board Naked

It's official, we've lost our minds. Well, ok, maybe 'we' haven't but certainly Representatives Edward Karkey (D-MA) and Joseph Crowley (D-NY) have by introducing the "Leave All Blades Behind Act". I wish this were a joke, but it's not.

"TSA should not be making it easier for the next Mohammed Atta to terrorize passengers at 30,000 feet," Rep. Markey said. "The flight attendants, air marshals and families of 9/11 victims support keeping the ban in place. The Bush Administration should listen to them – they know, from first-hand experience, the devastation that sharp objects such as metal scissors can cause in the hands of a suicidal terrorist," Rep. Markey added.

Senator Clinton (D-NY) is also behind the legislation:

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) will introduce and Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) will co-sponsor companion Senate legislation. The Republican-controlled Congress should schedule a vote on our bill before Congress adjourns later this month.

What these dimwits apparently fail to understand is that it was precisely the safety of passengers that the TSA was (finally) looking out for. They realized that they were wasting time confiscating nail clippers from blue-haired octogenarions instead of looking out for more obvious threats.

When one gets into the business of banning 'blades' one discovers that it's not like banning firearms. And in fact, once you ban firearms, you realize that you're left with a large group of helpless, unarmed people who find themselves at the mercy of clever assailants who have spent some time thinking about improvised weapons.

When one sits down and really considers what common items could be broken, sharpened, bent or otherwise quickly modified and made into a potention weapon, the mind boggles. Plastic forks, knives, chopsticks, toothbrushes... the list goes on.

The perversity of all of this is the TSA continues to disarm all honest passengers in their attempt (and guaranteed failure) to disarm the terrorists. I can personally guarantee that I can get effective, improvised weapons on board an airplane that no TSA official would ever catch. Ever. At this point, we have devolved into a place where the only way to best insure that no one has weapons, sharp objects, potential explosives, or any other item that might be used to bring down a plane is to force all passengers to check ALL baggage, no medicines, no carryons, no baby formula. The clothes on your back after a full pat-down search is all that should be allowed. Knowing that this option is of course, completely ridiculous, we're left with a confused Congress and a keystone-cop like TSA, chasing down the latest perceived threat while terrorists are quietly improvising new ways to blow up planes. In fact, if the idiot terrorists would get their act together, they'd move on to something else besides planes and do something smart, like place explosives under bridges in some random city other than New York or Los Angeles in the middle of the night when no one's looking and then detonate them during rush hour.