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snarks wrote:

"Identity checks and weapons searches at airports are just some of the myriad ways that the well-intentioned many try to protect themselves..."

Would you agree that guns in the cockpit and an elimination of airline bailouts might be a more effective way to accomplish this goal while simultaneously saving taxpayers several billion a year?

Last year's TSA budget was a little under 5 billion according to

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/10/20031001-7.html

While there is a small group of pilots now allowed to carry firearms (four years after 911!) it's no where near where it would be if the feds had mostly gotten out of it.

Sent this as an LTE to the Portsmouth Herald

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Dear folks at the Herald:

With regard to the "Unidentified Flying Objector" Russell Kanning and his arrest at the Manchester Airport for refusing to comply with TSA regulations:

There are some interesting highlights about his case which haven't come up much in the press yet.

1) Whether you approve or don't approve of Kanning's precise approach, he has helped the public become aware of something hardly anyone knew before: It is possible to fly without I.D. if you are willing to submit to a secondary search. Kanning wasn't, but if you are then you can fly I.D.-free! If Russell had done his protest last year it would have saved me countless hours trying to procure a new I.D. for my grandmother who had lost hers but needed to travel. Hopefully his sacrifice will save many others this hassle in the future.

2) Kanning and his wife Kat had company during their drive to the airport...at least three FBI agents. I more or less confirmed this with one of the other FBI guys. Kat reports that she and Russell led the tailing agents on a couple quick detours just to mess with them...earning a grin from one of the drivers. It's an amusing anecdote, and the agents have remained friendly, but this doesn't seem to be a very efficient use of tax dollars. The Kanning home in Keene has also been under open surveillance off and on since Kanning announced his protest.

History doesn't look kindly on Hoover's waste of resources investigating peaceful activists in the 60s; it may frown a bit on this allocation as well.

3) There had been some concern among Kanning's supporters about making sure no travelers were delayed by his protest. I timed it out...Kanning was in his line for a little under 5 minutes before being hauled off; the other line (which remained open) reached a length of five persons but never more than that. As Kanning put it...Manchester airport is one of the best in the country but would be better without TSA!

4) Kanning didn't just have a complaint to make; he also has a couple of solutions in mind, solutions he believes in strongly enough to face arrest. These include allowing pilots to arm themselves and ending the practice of government bailouts for airlines who let terrorists seize their planes. Both of these goals would of course be realized by getting government *completely out* of aviation, and we'd all be safer for it. As one local pilot put it: "I am willing to bet my life on that proposition."

I agree that if somebody breaks into the cockpit of a plane, the flight crew should have some effective means of protecting themselves (and so the passengers). Whether that effective means is a handgun or a Taser or some other sort of device is something that requires careful consideration. However, I don't think that permitting some form of cockpit defense ought to supplant identity checks and weapons searches of passengers; the more precautions the better, it seems to me. Flying is already dangerous enough without the threat of terrorist hijackers, so we should try to do everything we can to prevent such evildoers from ever again succeeding in taking over a plane.

As for airline bailouts, I'm against them in general, but willing to concede that there might be occasions when, for the good of the air-traveling public (which is quite a large number of people), some government assistance might be in order. Those who argue that, on principle, no government assistance should ever be given to private companies are trying to live in a world in which the theory of laissez faire capitalism is realized in practice—that world doesn't exist now nor has it ever existed. We work with what we've got and try to make it better if we can. That's my pragmatic take.