The now-infamous Flight #253 demonstrates that as a nation we have come full circle since 9/11. Eight years after absurdly lax airline security and an obscenely porous student visa program cost thousands of Americans their lives, we have achieved absolutely nothing in the way of improved safety for the country. After two invasions, tens of thousands of casualties, the expenditure of a trillion dollars, the erection of massive federal bureaucracies, the enactment of The Patriot Act, and a whole lot of hyper-patriotic chest-thumping, we are in the exact same place that we were on September 10, 2001...relying upon the exertions and efforts of the paying customers aboard the plane...
Having placed myself on a perpetual no-fly list, I can now plainly see that for all the derision that he endured, John Madden's aversion to airline flight was always just good sense.
