As if we needed further proof of the Wall Street Journal’s imbecility and jaw-dropping jingoism, James Taranto (“editor of OpinionJournal.com and author of its popular Best of the Web Today column. In August 2007 he was named a member of The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board”) defended the TSA in his column yesterday.
It takes a particular sort of toadying nincompoop and tone-deaf newsman to fight for the TSA now, when much of the country has awakened to the agency’s evil; it takes an even bigger nincompoop without any ears at all to stand up for one of the TSA’s most excoriated “policies”: its groping of grandmothers.
But Jimbo’s equal to the task: “Why do grandmothers get frisked at airports?” he asks. “For years this rhetorical question has been a trope of the Transportation Security Administration’s critics. But maybe the TSA was on to something all along. FoxNews.com” — that self-proclaimed bastion of “unbiased” reporting — says “‘a 46-year-old Indiana grandmother is under investigation for her possible ties to suspected and convicted international terrorists.’ The granny, Kathie Smith of Indianapolis, ‘has blogged about her granddaughter.’ Last year she” — Jimbo means Kathie, not her granddaughter, but I had to Google “Kathie Smith” to find out. Apparently, the ability to write clearly isn’t a prerequisite for the WSJ’s hacks — “‘married a suspected German jihadist, and has been flying back and forth between the U.S. and Germany as recently as two weeks ago.”
As if Kathie’s marriage and travels weren’t exoneration enough of the TSA and, indeed, the entire War on Terror, the lady also refuses to buy the official story of 9/11. Jimbo breathlessly explains that “Fox … conducted an interview with Smith consisting of ‘lengthy e-mail exchanges,’ in which she … ‘called the Sept. 11 attacks an inside job…’”
Worse, Kathie resorts to logic and recent history when the nitwits at Fox or the WSJ smear her, her new husband and their friends as terrorists: “The so-called ‘jihadists’ you have mentioned are actually personal friends of my husband from childhood … who have died fighting for freedom … It is just that your government has deemed these noble men as ‘terrorists’ because they are not on the same side. Least [sic] us not forget the Mujahideen who fought the Russians for the U.S. They were deemed ‘heroes’ and lead [sic] by Osama Bin Laden at that time, and now because the government says so . . . they are ‘terrorists.'”
Rather than refute Kathie’s irrefutable reasoning, Jimbo attempts a witticism instead: “Sounds as though she’s read the Reuters stylebook.” I said he “attempted”; I didn’t say he succeeded.
Kathie also complained that the TSA harasses her with “hours-long interrogations … every time she travels. She said her luggage has been subjected to bomb residue tests, and that officials asked her numerous detailed questions about her husband. She also claims DHS officials on more than one occasion escorted her onto a departing airplane.”
All of which unconstitutional abomination Jimbo applauds. Wonder if Santa brought the guy a new pair of knee-pads for Christmas.
10:17 am on December 30, 2010