TSA Backlash Week: Fox News Strikes Back!

From my friend Ben, fresh video from Fox News:



The security folks seem unwilling to backdown. That's why TSA Backlash Week must continue.

Are Mennonites Becoming Too Influential?

At The American Spectator, Mark Tooley writes an article mocking Mennonites for their victimhood and for the perniciously liberal influence they're having in evangelical circles. He writes:

"All these neo-Anabaptists denounce traditional American Christianity for its supposed seduction by American civil religion and ostensible support for the 'empire.' They reject and identify America with the reputed fatal accommodation between Christianity and the Roman Emperor Constantine capturing the Church as a supposed instrument of state power. Conservative Christians are neo-Anabaptists' favorite targets for their alleged usurpation by Republican Party politics. But the neo-Anabaptists increasingly offer their own fairly aggressive politics aligned with the Democratic Party, in a way that should trouble traditional Mennonites. Although the neo-Anabaptists sort of subscribe to a tradition that rejects or, at most, passively abides state power, they now demand a greatly expanded and more coercive state commandeering health care, regulating the environment, and punishing wicked industries."

First: Tooley never really grapples with whether Mennonite pacifism is theologically correct. I think that's telling. Who wants to argue that Jesus wants us to drop fragmentation bombs on foreign countries?

Second: Tooley's right that martyrdom -- literal and metaphorical -- is at the foundation of the Mennonite story. He neglects that that's true of pretty much the entirety of Christianity. The founder died on a cross so that his followers could live! It's silly to act like Mennonites are particularly vulnerable to the self-pity that accompanies the theology.

Third: as has been much-noted, I'm no longer in the church. If I were to return to Christianity, though, I'd probably return to the Mennonites. And though it's not really my place to make this observation, Tooley might have a point that many active peace-and-justice Mennonites have put too much faith in politics, and in the Democratic Party in particular, to bring about a just world they believe Jesus points to. (It's not a uniform leaning, though. I grew up partially in the Mennonite Brethren church, where most of the people who surrounded me were far more interested in supporting the GOP's pro-life policies than the Dems' anti-war positions. I don't see Tooley complaining about that. )

I don't think that means Mennonites should absent themselves from politics. I think it's good to have a segment of society that offers principled resistance to American hawkishness. But Mennonites shouldn't expect to find salvation in politics. None of us should.

UPDATE: A friend suggests should make the point I made on my Facebook account, in response to the Spectator's "Mennonite Takeover?" headline: "Today, rural Kansas! Tomorrow: slightly more expansive areas of rural Kansas!" Demographically, Mennonites aren't and never will be all that strong a force. But I don't want to discount that Mennonite ideas can seep into the broader discourse without being joined to Mennonite identity, which still tends to have a very strong ethnic component. (Apologies to all my Desi Mennonite friends.)

TSA Backlash Week: Invading Your Privacy Is Good Business

Washington Examiner:

"If you've seen one of these scanners at an airport, there's a good chance it was made by L-3 Communications, a major contractor with the Department of Homeland Security. L-3 employs three different lobbying firms including Park Strategies, where former Sen. Al D'Amato, R-N.Y., plumps on the company's behalf. Back in 1989, President George H.W. Bush appointed D'Amato to the President's Commission on Aviation Security and Terrorism following the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103. Also on Park's L-3 account is former Appropriations staffer Kraig Siracuse.

The scanner contract, issued four days after the Christmas Day bomb attempt last year, is worth $165 million to L-3.

Rapiscan got the other naked-scanner contract from the TSA, worth $173 million. Rapiscan's lobbyists include Susan Carr, a former senior legislative aide to Rep. David Price, D-N.C., chairman of the Homeland Security Subcommittee. When Defense Daily reported on Price's appropriations bill last winter, the publication noted 'Price likes the budget for its emphasis on filling gaps in aviation security, in particular the whole body imaging systems.'"

Wait for it...

Deploying these naked scanners was a reaction to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's failed attempt to blow up a plane on Christmas 2009, but the Government Accountability Office found, "it remains unclear whether [the scanners] would have been able to detect the weapon Mr. Abdulmutallab used."

Your government in action.

TSA Backlash Week: Napolitano's Take

Janet Napolitano tries to get ahead of TSA Backlash Week. It might be more convincing if she didn't conclude with a blitz of bureaucratic-speak: "We face a determined enemy. Our security depends on us being more determined and more creative to adapt to evolving threats. It relies upon a multi-layered approach that leverages the strengths of our international partners, the latest intelligence, and the patience and vigilance of the American traveling public." And that's the most engaging part!

Hey, I get it: If a plane goes down, Napolitano loses her job and probably retires to the ranks of HeckuvaJobBrowniedom. It might not be entirely fair: As I've said, it's possible to do everything right and the terrorists still score a point. But read her whole piece and there's a sense that Napolitano -- who should have a bit of a political ear; she was a governor, after all -- isn't really engaging the real concerns of real people who actually have to hurdle TSA's procedures to go on business trips or visit family or do whatever else they have to do. Napolitano's message: It's not that bad. But the people who are coming forward with stories of being felt up or losing their tickets because they refuse invasive screening are adding up, and they have a message, too: It's bad enough. Stop it.

We're approaching a point where TSA is going to have to be responsive to the concerns of fliers -- the people it's trying to keep secure, after all -- or the agency will strangle the airline industry. The worst thing that can happen is that people accept these measures as "the new normal."

Afghanistan Quagmire Watch

Gen. Petraeus' feelings are apparently quite hurt over Hamid Karzai's publicly stated wish to reduce the number of American troops and scale back their activities in Afghanistan. The Washington Post quotes a NATO official: "'It's pretty clear that you no longer have a reliable partner in Kabul,' the official added. 'I think we tried to paper it over with [Karzai's] Washington visit' in May. 'But the wheels have becoming looser and looser . . . since that.'"

But Karzai hasn't been a reliable partner for a very, very long time. If you go back and look at Gen. Stanley McChrystal's memo that preceded the current surge of troops, it's clear that corruption in Karzai's government was a major factor in the recent successes of the Taliban. It's why I didn't support the surge, because there was no pathway to making Karzai an honest and good leader of his people. There still isn't. Why NATO officials would act surprised by that is perplexing.

The Perpetual E-Reader Revolution

New York Times: "This could be the holiday season that American shoppers and e-readers are properly introduced." Wait. Wasn't everybody writing that last Christmas? (Yes.) How many Christmases in a row are we going to hear that e-readers are really arriving in the American marketplace this year? Haven't they gotten their foothold by now? I think so. Maybe it's time for a new narrative.*

*Incidentally, really enjoying my iPad as an e-reader. I can do Kindle and Nook and Stanza and iBooks on it. Don't know why anybody would bother with a single-bookstore machine like Kindle at this point.

Oklahoma's Anti-Shariah Law

It's possible that the term "McCarthyism" is bandied about too much. But this is stupid, ugly, McCarthyist fear-mongering, and the people who engage in it -- as well as the people who buy it -- are going to be (rightfully) judged harshly by history. New York Times:

"Mr. Williams was one of 10 Democrats who voted against putting a state constitutional amendment on the ballot that would forbid state judges from considering international or Islamic law in deciding cases. He considered the idea unnecessary, since the First Amendment already bans state-imposed religion.

His Republican challenger sent out mailers showing him next to a shadowy figure in an Arab headdress. On the other side, the flier said Mr. Williams wanted to allow “Islamic ‘Shariah’ law to be used by Oklahoma courts” and suggested that he was part of “an international movement, supported by militant Muslims and liberals,” to establish Islamic law throughout the world.

Like I said recently, though, history never pays a price. So rather than wait, it's important now to call these stupid, ugly McCarthyist fearmongers out for the stupid, ugly McCarthyist fearmongers they are.