THE PANTY BOMBER

There’s not much I can say about Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab that hasn’t been said already. He paid for his ticket in cash, he had no luggage on a transatlantic flight, he was a 23-year-old Muslim who had recently spent a lot of time in Yemen, and his daddy (a prominent banker and diplomat in both London and Nigeria) had warned the State Department that his kid had become a dangerous radical. Yet somehow he was allowed to fly from Lagos to Amsterdam to Detroit without anyone questioning his bona fides.

And you can’t take a tube of toothpaste in your carry-on.

In response to this incident, no one can go to the potty or read a book during the last hour of international flights into America. In addition, Joan Rivers got kicked off a flight from Costa Rica to Newark as a security risk and Michael Yon (America’s most respected war correspondent), got led off in handcuffs today at the Seattle airport.

I wrote about airport security four years ago, when it was a joke. (See here.) And now it’s worse. After billions spent on the TSA, do any of us have any confidence in these people? I mean, if the joint efforts of the TSA, Homeland Security and the State Department couldn’t stop Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a guy who practically had “TERRORIST” tattooed on his forehead, what’s the point of spending more billions on the TSA and making plane travel even more annoying for the rest of us? Why bother?

The only people you can count on, as Flight #253 proved yet again, are your fellow passengers. So why not empower them? I reiterate my suggestion from four years ago, originally voiced by Archie Bunker himself. People with concealed carry permits, cops, security guards---anyone who is normally permitted to possess a handgun---should be encouraged to take it on the plane. The pilot would be informed, he would have a look at you, and if he didn’t like what he saw, your piece would ride with him. But every flight would have armed citizens on it, and that would be the end of the problem.

Copyright2010MichaelKubacki