First, everyone wanted to check as much baggage as possible to avoid security hassles.

Now that the Transportation Security Administration has banned luggage locks, anyone with any sense is carrying on anything of value — which means longer lines with the rent-a-feds.

Fliers’ angst, and the luggage industry’s design response, is well told in this Tribune story by Kathy Bergen.

The same issue of Liberty which published Gene Healy’s awesome piece lauded below also included this gem from its publisher/editor-in-chief R.W. Bradford:

For the past 25 years, Republicans have been more or less committed, in rhetoric, at least, to a more constrained government. When they’ve held the presidency, they’ve blamed the huge growth of government on the Democrats who controlled Congress. When they’ve controlled Congress, they’ve blamed the continued growth of government on the Democratic president.

Now the GOP controls it all. They no longer have any excuse for the growth of government and the erosion of liberty. It’s time for them to put up or shut up. Or it would be a time if politics took place in what we normally view as the real world, a world in which bullshit is not a major currency.

Fantastic!

This makes a lot more sense than getting into bloody street-to-street warfare in Baghdad (link via OneManGang).

The best argument against the coming war with Iraq, that is, has arrived. Actually, it arrived a while ago, but I’m finally getting around to linking to it.

Gene Healy’s “Iraq: Wrong Place, Wrong Time, Wrong War” first appeared in the January issue of Liberty magazine, but only appeared online as a Cato commentary.

It’s really a fantastic piece, and addresses just about every pro-war argument in a mature, even-handed, intelligent way that doesn’t resort to ad hominem.

While some naifs want Illinois Gov. George Ryan nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for enacting a moratorium on the death penalty in the state and issuing a blanket commutation to all those sitting on death row, Slate’s Chris Suellentrop knows better.

Most folks outside the state don’t know about Ryan’s ugly past, or about his impending indictment. Suellentrop offers a beginner’s version, and also lays out a case for why the same things that drove Ryan to abuse his political power in office also drove him to issue the blanket commutation.

Certainly, the commutation itself skirts the edges of the law, if it doesn’t outright break it. The governor has the power to pardon convicted criminals or commute their sentences based on careful review of each case, but Ryan admits he didn’t base his decision on the merits of individual cases but general flaws in the system. He simply judged that the system as a whole had failed.

That’s probably the correct judgment considering the 13 death row denizens who’ve been exonerated in the last few years. But was it within Ryan’s constitutional power to commute all these sentences on the judgment that the death penalty generally had failed? That’s a legitimate question, and an important one if you care abou the rule of law.

First he wanted to tax services like auto repairs and haircuts and now he doesn’t. He’s not floated any spending-cut ideas, though. Hmph.

As for the supposed crises all the states are have trying to balance their budgets, state spending increased by an average of 3.3 percent, adjusted for inflation, according to the USA Today’s Dennis Cauchon. I’m sure Illinois is no exception. (Link via Virginia Postrel’s The Scene.)

I don’t understand why Dubya came out against the University of Michigan’s admissions program. He tried to split the difference, sure, inasmuch as the White House brief does not condemn racial preferences in all circumstances, but that certainly won’t matter to the Democrats trying to get out the black vote in
2004.

Jeez, the only reason Florida was so close in 2000 was because of the incredible black turnout after Jeb’s jettisoning of racial preferences in the state’s contracting and admissions programs.

And, certainly, lame damage control attempts such as placing a story in today’s Post claiming that Condi Rice played a key role in Dubya’s decision won’t help much to assuage the concerns of black voters, who already have an unfavorable opinion of Dubya and a majority of whom are against the coming war in Iraq.

After all the machinations to get steel votes in Pennsylvania and Ohio (assuming that strategy works to begin with, which is questionable), they’ll probably be offset by an increase in black votes for the Democratic nominee in Cincinnati, Cleveland, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. And all of this on top of the Trent “All These Problems” Lott debacle. Anyone care to explain this to me?

The Congress critters are back in session. Brrr.

The Henry Hazlitt Foundation, publisher of the premier libertarian portal, Free-Market.Net, as well as other successful channels such as ifeminists.com and Bureaucrash, is broke. If you care about liberty and can help in any way, please do.

The Transportation Security Agency now says that fliers should not pack food or lock their bags. Apparently, the government’s “high-tech bomb-detection devices” can’t tell the difference between a bomb and a fruitcake.

Also, it seems the only way the TSA can hire enough qualified screeners is to offer them the opportunity to rifle through passengers’ bags every once in a while. The airlines got a lot of flak for their supposedly lax security on Sept. 11 (though it should be noted that all of the hijackers boarded with items that were legal at the time), but there’s a very practical reason why the airlines ran security the way they did: the chances of a terrorist attack are so small that the daily needs (that is, desires) of passengers to be processed quickly overrode security concerns.

Now, of course, the feds are in charge, and they have no reason to consider passengers’ desires at all. That is, they have no financial motive, only political pressures. As tragic as Sept. 11 was, it’s not clear to me that putting the feds in charge so they can pass these ridiculous rules is going to make future hijackings less likely. What will make the difference — and has already made the difference — is a change in how the passengers and the flight crew deal with terrorists. They no longer mediate, but confront.

Of course, flight crew are not allowed to carry guns, and neither are law-abiding passengers. So there’s one method of self-defense thrown out the window. And now that fruitcakes are banned, yet another potential defensive weapon has been removed from the modern passenger’s arsenal.

CNN says Trent Lott is stepping down as Senate majority leader. Does this mean he’ll have yet another change of heart on affirmative action?

The scenario I laid out below about why Dubya seemed to be dragging his feet on Trent “All These Problems” Lott seems to be wrong. According to the AP’s David Espo:

White House officials have told Republicans that Bush is willing to accept the consequences if Lott loses the majority leader position, quits the Senate and allows Mississippi’s Democratic governor to replace him, GOP officials say.

Bush’s political advisers say they were not impressed with Lott’s explanations, including a news conference Friday, but they insist they’re not getting involved in the Senate’s internal debate over Lott’s future.

Oh, well.