Year-end Terror Special

Janet Napolitano had an unfortunate little moment of idiocy a couple days back when she said the thwarted Christmas Day airliner attack showed that "the system worked," unless TSA's new super-effective security system relies on incompetent terrorists setting their nuts on fire, immobilizing them long enough for the nearest Dutchman to get them in a headlock. In which case it worked just fine.

Arizona's own esteemed junior senator, Jon Kyl (R-OhForFuck'sSake) piled on yesterday with his own little bout of idiocy.

Sen. Jon Kyl said he doesn't "feel totally safe'' with Janet Napolitano at the helm of the Department of Homeland Security, given that agency's handling of the attempt to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner.

Kyl said it was bad enough that the Nigerian got on the plane in the first place given what should have been warning signals. But in response to a question about whether he feels secure with Napolitano heading Homeland Security, he said that is only part of the problem.

Yes, the guy was dragging more red flags than the entire Pamplona running of the bulls and The Last Samurai combined and still managed to buy a ticket in Africa and get on a plane in Amsterdam. But. Unless Janet Napolitano was personally standing at the jetway door in Lagos saying come in! you fool! and waving Captain Underpants onto the plane without a passport, I'm not sure she's the one who needs to be slapped around here. Except, of course, for saying the parts of the system not involving self-immolation and alert Dutchmen worked.

Frankly, her words may have been more of an inadvertent slip than the up-is-down doublespeak/dumbassery we took them for at first. TSA security is... not thought out perhaps as well as it could be, shall we say, something I've thought ever since Richard Reid failed to ignite his Chuck Taylors and condemned the traveling public to taking off their shoes at security at the rest of forever. I said then that if I ran an al Qaeda cell I wouldn't bother trying to actually kill people, but would simply send a string of flunkies onto planes to pull off increasingly absurd failed attacks involving increasingly intimate levels of undergarments, just to see how far TSA would go with their reactionary rather than preventative rules. OMG a shoe bomber! Everybody take off your shoes! Jesus, a bra bomber! Sorry, ladies, but that's going to have to go into the bin. Holy shit, a hair bomber! Please hop into the barber chair right here at the shoe dropoff, okay?

And then aQ went and spoiled it by ramping up immediately to their underwear bomber, and the best TSA could bring themselves to do is no blankets and no laptops and no paperbacks and no wanking through your pants in the last hour of flight. Because the very first thing that went through everyone's mind when this news broke was underwear bomber = everybody flies naked now and TSA can't make that particular the-jokes-just-write-themselves joke come true. So they slap together more patchwork rules that essentially say okay, don't try THAT particular tactic again, which does pretty much zero to prevent the next new thing aQ will think up to make air travel even more annoying and possibly deadly, and I'm left with the distinct impression that the ultimate fallback system TSA is really counting on is passengers noticing something off and saying oh FUCK no and jumping the next guy who tries to blow up a plane.

Bruce Schneier, whose job is to think about this stuff, thinks the same thing.

"Security theater" refers to security measures that make people feel more secure without doing anything to actually improve their security.

Security is both a feeling and a reality. The propensity for security theater comes from the interplay between the public and its leaders.

When people are scared, they need something done that will make them feel safe, even if it doesn't truly make them safer. Politicians naturally want to do something in response to crisis, even if that something doesn't make any sense.

Happy traveling, America! And hey, keep your hands where I can see them.

Jan, Janet, What's the Difference?

The difference, unfortunately, comes down to life in Arizona having been mostly tolerable due to Democratic Governor Janet Napolitano's heavy veto pen keeping a rabid Republican legislature at bay, and now having the prospects of being far less tolerable once uber-conservative Republican Secretary of State Jan Brewer sails into the seat Napolitano will vacate in January to become head of Homeland Security.

That could result in the state pulling back from Napolitano-backed efforts on climate change, emissions caps, increased health insurance and education spending. It also could push the state forward on immigration controls and penalties for businesses hiring illegal immigrants and abortion rights restrictions, according to officials familiar with Brewer and Napolitano.

“I think we can kiss goodbye to the climate change efforts and any leadership on that,” said Sandy Bahr, state coordinator for the Sierra Club environmental group. “I don’t think much of the environmental progress will stay. With this legislature and Jan Brewer, we are in a world of hurt when it comes to protecting the state’s resources.”

Napolitano vetoed anti-abortion bills coming out of the Legislature, including a partial-birth prohibition that would have piggybacked on a federal ban. Napolitano signed off on some get-tough immigration bills forwarded by the right-wing Republicans but vetoed others.

For a state that is rapidly churning through its few remaining pristine open spaces that are in proximity to urban areas and has local and county boards that roll over for real estate developers on a regular basis, a state that languishes at the bottom of the nation when it comes to primary and secondary education and teen pregnancy, well, this isn't great news. It's spectacular for land speculators and the Southern Arizona Home Builders Association. Saguaros and public school kids in South Tucson? Not so much.

Jan Brewer also vigorously opposed the inclusion of language in the gay marriage-banning ballot measure explaining that gay marriage was already illegal under Arizona statute. And she was happy to bring the lovely Diebold touchscreen voting machines to Arizona, and then called Arizonans who objected to their use--after they had been demonstrated to be unreliable and unverifiable--anarchists and conspiracy theorists.

So Brewer and the Republican legislature get two years to de-fund public education and slash environmental protection in Arizona and make 700,000 East Valley voters deliriously happy to the point that they vote her back in for an additional 4 years, and in return Arizona gets... what? The honor and prestige of having an Arizonan serve as the head of a cabinet-level but really poorly structured department? And what, really, does Napolitano get out of it? If she manages to streamline DHS and get it to do something actually useful, like, say, maybe checking shipping containers and airline cargo, maybe she gets a pat on the head. Will it springboard her into the Senate, if that's where she sees this ending? Not likely.

Impending senses of doom keep me from my rest.

Dammit, Janet!

Headline in the national news section of the Daily Star this morning: N. J. Ruling for Gay Marriage Energizes GOP Base. It is time to stop using the term "base" and start calling them what they are. The revised headline, of course, should read "N. J. Ruling for Gay Marriage Energizes GOP Bigots." Or perhaps "N. J. Ruling for Gay Marriage Gets Fundie Knickers in a Twist."

Proposition 107, the ballot measure in Arizona seeking to amend the constitution to outlaw gay marriage and civil unions, is polling increasingly poorly. This is good. Governor Janet Napolitano is opposed to it. This also is good. Curiously, though, Napolitano is also opposed to gay marriage:

Napolitano has said on several occasions, including this week, that she does not support gay marriage despite opposing Prop. 107. The governor said Wednesday she believes marriage should be between a man and a woman.

This is fascinating, given that I've always assumed she was a big ol' dyke herself. Other people seem to have assumed the same thing.

A reporter from the liberal New Times newspaper questioned Napolitano on Prop. 107 and her gay marriage stance at a Wednesday press conference. The questions quickly turned more aggressive, including bringing up rumors the governor is gay.

Napolitano has said on several occasions that she is not gay and said she was offended by the New Times question.

Whatever, Janet. Napolitano has been vital to moderate and liberal interests in Arizona since she's been in office, vetoing haybales of inane legislation delivered by the Republican legislature. She's stood up for gay rights in the workplace and supported domestic partner registries. Hearing the "one man, one woman" line coming out of her mouth is disheartening, unless she meant it as a veiled threat to the child-raping polygamists in Colorado City.

Not likely. Please, woman, do not put me in the position of having to vote against you for being a hypocrite. There are no other champions of reason bobbing anywhere in sight in the gubernatorial pool.

Equally puzzling ("puzzling" here meaning "spurring me to bang my head on the table") was the Daily Star's Prop 107 summary, published Saturday:

● Real-World Impact: The amendment would block "activist judges" or the Legislature from changing the law to redefine marriage, which backers say must be preserved as a traditional institution. Critics say same-sex marriage already is illegal in Arizona, and the move mostly punishes straight couples by denying them domestic-partner benefits. Gay and lesbian activists also say it would be a blow to them.

Just love it that gay folk--you know, the people the measure was written specifically to hurt--are mentioned as an afterthought, as a footnote. Granted, if demographics are the sole basis of the argument, then the move does indeed "mostly punish straight couples," simply because unmarried straight couples outnumber gay couples by about 10 to 1 in Arizona (taken with the obligatory grain of salt required by self-reported census numbers). This argument is mitigated, however, by the fact that unmarried straight couples truly are in a voluntary situation. I recognize that some of those couples are senior citizens attempting to preserve Social Security and pension benefits from deceased spouses, or non-seniors attempting to shield their new partner's income and assets from a vindictive alimony-seeking ex-spouse, but these exceptional circumstances certainly do not apply to all 115,700 straight couples in the state.

And--regardless of the reasons these people have for not marrying--if a civil union ban is passed and the unmarried couple relies on domestic partner benefits for health coverage, they do still have the option of traipsing to the courthouse, plunking down fifty bucks, and bingo, having their relationship recognized by the state, no questions asked. In that regard, the bulk of the punishment falls squarely as intended: on the backs of gay and lesbian couples who will have no recourse when their partner benefits are taken away.

Given that, the recent No on 107 flyer that landed in my mailbox last week was more than a little disingenuous. Pictures of two straight couples, one 30-ish, one 80-ish, were prominently featured. No pictures of same-sex couples, no mention of us at all save for the statement that gay marriage is already prohibited by statute. The focus was on straight couples.

I wish the people fighting for us were actually fighting for us on principle, not just because they had the potential to be hurt themselves. You know, that old thing about injustice anywhere meaning injustice everywhere, or whatsoever you do to the least of these? That thing? Yeah, it would be nice.