Good Thing We Finally Closed that Barn Door

Ever since I read Jeffery Goldberg’s dismantling of the Transportation Security Administration, I have believed that the TSA was a complete waste of time.  However, it is no use to kick against the goads, of all the worthless crap in our system airport security has the most glaring cause and the least political gain from change.  It is the ultimate orphan of a cause: if you make airport security less of a pain then everyone benefits, but if anything ever happens it will be your fault.  You would literally have your face of the cover of every paper in the country under a headline blaming you for a terrorist attack.

Yoo Just Don’t Get It

Friend of all things waterfall hat-related, Stein Time contributed the following.

John Yoo recently wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, titled Why We Endorsed Warrantless Wiretapping, defending the decision to violate the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and allow the NSA to intercept the communications of U.S. citizens, regardless of whether there was probable cause.  He employs the same trusted rhetorical devices: doomsday scenarios, fear-mongering, straw-men arguments, selective disclosure of facts, an appeal to patriotism, and quotes from past patriots, like Alexander Hamilton and John Locke.  But something struck me as worthy of pointing out.  The editorial is not a denial of wrongdoing.  Instead, it is a tacit admission that he and others knowingly broke a law they deemed to be “outdated” or, more precisely, inconvenient and prohibitive.