The liberal weeners who wrote the episode considered that the height of right-wing-establishment absurdity, but it sounds like an intriguing possibility to me. :-)
I see where the crack airport security teams who let 19 out of 19 terrorists slip through their net last Sept. 11 have been saving the republic from terror, again.
The Washington Times reported last week that airline security personnel at Phoenix's Sky Harbor International Airport stopped a suspicious looking gentleman as he tried to board an America West plane Jan. 11 on his way to attend a meeting of the National Rifle Association in Arlington, Virginia.
Searching the 86-year-old duffer, they found in his sports coat pocket a commemorative metal nail file, a dummy rifle cartridge — the kind with a hole drilled through it to show it contains no powder or primer but is instead to be used on a key chain — and the subject of this little account, a square piece of metal somewhat more than an inch across, with somewhat sharp edges.
The press widely reports that metal nail files and other instruments with blades are now prohibited in aircraft cabins under Federal Aviation Administration regulations that went into effect after the September 11 — though in fact the FAA has no power to enact any new laws through its advisory "security directives."
In this case, the 86-year-old South Dakota native explained to the crack operatives of the Fred & Ethel Mertz Security Team -- soon to be sworn in as full-fledged federal employees, complete with membership cards in the federal employees union and a whopping jump in pay -- that he doesn't normally travel with the little metal cross.
"I do not carry the medal around with me," Joseph J. Foss told the Times in a Jan. 18 telephone interview. "But I had it with me this time to show to cadets at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point," where he'd been a guest speaker the previous week.