The author of 101 Things To Do Before the Revolution and Don’t Shoot the Bastards (Yet) has a blog!  The last I had heard she was offline and didn’t know when she would start writing again.  The first two entries (here and here) I read were enough to convince me that she hasn’t ‘lost anything’.  She’s now on my list of things to read each day.  She also has some new books out.

It was pointed out to me by Kirk in the comments to my last post that the bill where they banned butane lighters on airplanes was about 3000 pages long.  Almost for certain no single person read the entire bill and probably only a few realized the idiotic restriction was in there.  The idiots were the people that put that provision in to begin with.  Some of the others I can almost express a little bit of tolerance for.  But 3000 pages?  That should have taken them a year to go through with a magnifying glass, to debate it, to revise it, and think about all the consequences.  It affects the entire world and they allowed a vote without everyone having read the entire thing?  Before they are allowed to vote on a bill they should have to pass a quiz on it that had at least one question from every page just to make sure they really knew what they are voting on.  If they don’t pass with a ‘C’ or better grade (no grading on the curve either) then they don’t get to vote.  And their “report card” would be posted on their website when they run for reelection.  If they are flunking out by mid-term they get booted out of office, stripped naked, tarred and feathered, and get a ride out of D.C. on a rail.  The governor of their state would then appoint a replacement.  If the replacement failed at the end of the term both the replacement and the governor get “the treatment“.  Okay, maybe that is a too extreme and would never get accepted by a majority of the voters.  We can drop the feathers to get the support of the animal rights people.

I am nearly dumbstruck.  I can hardly believe people smart enough to get themselves elected would be this stupid.  The Intelligence Reform Bill that just past the House had a provision to ban butane lighters from carry-on. 

Democratic Sens. Ron Wyden of Oregon and Byron Dorgan of North Dakota had pushed for the change for more than a year after learning the Transportation Security Administration allowed them on planes.

“When I found out that they had explicitly, in their rule, said you could take two butane lighters and four books of matches on board, I thought, ’What have they been drinking?”’ Dorgan said. Matches still are allowed.

Can’t you just hear the Mujahideen?  “Oh no!  What are we going to do?  They won’t let us take butane lighters on planes anymore!  We might as well give up Islam and become capitalist Christians!”  And another one says, “But remember–we can take our big capitalist cigars onboard airplanes we just can’t use a butane lighter with them!“  And still another one says, “They must think that we are so stupid that if we don’t have a butane lighter for the fuse for the semtex we will bring two rocks onboard to bang against each other to get a spark!  Don’t you wonder how these people ever managed higher math?  Oh, I forgot, they didn’t!  We had to give them algebra!“

The stupidity of this action is so great that I can hardly calm myself to enumerate the issues with this.  I console myself with the knowledge that the two Senators quoted above are both Democrats.  They were already on my list for political extinction.

1. The obvious–if matches, and presumably non-butane lighters, are still allowed what have they accomplished?
2. The can’t even find knives, guns, and bombs people get past the screeners.  How are they going to stop a butane lighter from getting past security?  The plastic and liquid are almost completely transparent to x-rays and the metal portion is smaller than a quarter and could easily be hidden by a handful of coins.
3. If you can’t enforce a law you should never pass the law.  It breeds disrespect of the law in general, the politicians that created it in particular and it makes life more difficult for the people that are supposed to be enforcing it.
4. This will be a moral booster to the Islamic extremists.  This will be a joke they tell each other and their children about the stupidity of their enemy.

I once had a reader comment:

I don’t think I’d be _too_ upset to hear that Congress, the White House, and the Supremes had been vaporized.

I’m beginning to wonder if maybe he didn’t have a valid point.