TSA Backlash Watch: Talking With My Dad

TSA administrator John Pistole is making vague noises about backing down from the invasive security measures his agency is undertaking at the nation's airports. While we wait to see if those noises turn into action on this Thanksgiving holiday travel week, I decided to talk to the person I know who travels more than any other: My dad.

David Mathis is the senior vice president for sales and marketing at Golden Heritage Foods, located in my hometown of Hillsboro, Kan. He gets on a plane a couple of dozen times a year -- something he's been doing for, well, a couple of dozen decades now. And he's not all that bothered by the TSA's procedures. Weirdly, he agreed to let me interview him about this. Take a listen.

TSA Backlash Watch: The Shirt Off His Back

The TSA Blog:: "A video is being widely circulated showing a shirtless boy receiving secondary screening from a Transportation Security Officer (TSO). A passenger filmed the screening with their cell phone and posted the video on the web. ... It should be mentioned that you will not be asked to and you should not remove clothing (other than shoes, coats and jackets) at a TSA checkpoint. If you're asked to remove your clothing, you should ask for a supervisor or manager."

Will Saletan Is Wrong About Kinect and the Future of Innovation

While I'm in the business of talking about Slate's Will Saletan, let's examine this tweet: "Microsoft yields to the unpredictable creativity of the collective human mind. http://j.mp/d0KTB5 This, not R&D, is the future of innovation"

Follow the link, and you'll find this morning's Times story about how hackers are taking Microsoft's new Kinect technology and taking it places that Microsoft didn't expect. Some of those places are really cool. But Saletan's wrong to cast the future of innovation in either-or terms. It was a big huge company, Microsoft, that created the foundational technology and the people at home who are taking it new places. That would suggest that the future of innovation isn't just in big research labs or in somebody's home office, but in both places, building off the possibilities revealed by the other.

TSA Backlash Watch: William Saletan's Backlash

Slate's William Saletan grumbles about the "imbecils" protesting scanners and pat-downs: "Wednesday is the busiest air travel day of the year, and a horde of paranoid zealots—techno-libertarians, Tea Partiers, rabble-rousers, Internet activists, and congressional demagogues—has decided to make it even worse."

Saletan can get away with this string of insults because he's arguing against straw men. He disdains the health argument against the scanners, which is fine: I don't really buy that line of reasoning myself. But he invokes the menace of the underwear bomber -- all while failing to mention that it's questionable whether the scanners would've detected the underwear bomber in the first place.

And he grumbles about the idea that "National Opt-Out Day" will make air lines slower and air travel less secure. We'll see about that. Certainly, I'd agree that there needs to be a balance between keeping the system running smoothly and safely, and letting passengers retain a sense of liberty and dignity. Saletan treats the last consideration as though it's completely negligible in light of the first two factors. It's not, or at least it shouldn't be.

The Coming GOP Overreach

Republicans like to say that Barack Obama overinterpreted the mandate of the 2008 election. It's easy to see that Republicans are about to start doing stuff the voters didn't really intend:

"Liberal groups in Wisconsin are bracing for a fight over contraception coverage under Medicaid. Battle lines are being drawn over sex education in North Carolina. And conservatives in several states intend to try to limit the ability of private insurers to cover abortions.

Social issues barely rated in this year's economy-centric midterm elections. More than six in 10 voters who cast ballots on Election Day cited the economic downturn as their top concern, according to exit polls. And this year was the first in more than a decade in which same-sex marriage did not appear on a statewide ballot.

But major GOP gains in state legislatures across the country - where policy on social issues is often set - left cultural conservatives newly empowered"

The voters were thinking economy. The GOP is thinking about gay marriage and abortion. Let us know how that works out for you, Republicans.

The Party of 'Real America'

Slatest: "November's elections showed that the country is getting increasingly politically divided. Unlike the big GOP win in 1994, Republicans this time around won back the House without any real help from metropolitan areas, which remained largely Democratic. The GOP gains came mostly in districts 'that were older, less diverse and less educated than the nation as a whole,' notes the Washington Post. The good news for Democrats is that they continue to win among minorities and whites with more education, but they are increasingly losing working-class voters. While that's good news for Republicans it's also a shrinking percentage of the electorate."

Facebook Makes You Have Threesomes Before Facebook Was Invented

The Guardian:

"A pastor who said Facebook was a 'portal to infidelity' – and told married church leaders to delete their accounts or resign – once testified that he took part in group sex with his wife and a male church assistant.

Rev Cedric Miller confirmed the information reported yesterday by the Asbury Park Press of Neptune, New Jersey, which cited testimony he gave in court in 2003. The activities had ended by that time."

Difficult not to be mildly amused by a man who creates rules for other's behavior when he's played by rather more expansive rules. But seeing this in the best light: Rev. Miller might be very sincere in wanting to put up barriers to future infidelity for himself and the people around him. He's like the reformed alcoholic who becomes an anti-drinking zealot. (I've known a couple.) Hey buddy: Just because you can't handle the stuff doesn't mean the rest of us can't.