Reflections  

Moving day — There is growing talk now about whether or not Sen. Hillary Clinton will run for the presidency in 2008. I have one question about this. If she runs and if she wins, will she be required, upon moving back to the White House, to return all that furniture she took with her when last she left? — Ross Levatter

Diapers and dynamite — I flew on a plane a couple of weeks after the ban on liquids went into effect. I have chronically dry hands, and when traveling I used to keep a small tube of lotion to slather on them every couple of hours. No longer: lotion is an instrument of jihad, and is not allowed through security.

I was reading a book while waiting at my gate for the plane to arrive. As I flipped a page of the book I was reading — with some difficulty, given my dry hands — a small, unruly child ran past me in a shirt and a diaper, her mother in pursuit.

Excuse my indelicacy, but this was patently unfair. The crumb-cruncher probably had some baby lotion and diaper-rash cream slathered on her that morning. The kid was sure going to be wet by the time our six-hour flight was over. And disposable diapers are designed to hold moisture by wicking it into a gel.

This little jihadist-in-training was in possession of up to four banned substances, and they let her right through security.

I'm not being flip. If the goal is to keep religious extremists from blowing up airplanes, and we know they routinely strap bombs onto children, there is every reason to believe terrorists will pack their explosives on a child's rump rather than in Gatorade bottles and toothpaste tubes, if that's what it'll take to get through security. Babies and incontinent Arabs are a new danger.

A guy tries to ignite a shoe, they start X-raying shoes. Some people supposedly plot to ignite liquids, they ban liquids. This can't go on much longer. Either the reactive security paradigm will have to change, or civilian air travel will be a practical impossibility within a decade. — Patrick Quealy

Don't Buck the state — In a press conference held after the Sept. 8 capture of suspected cop-killer Ralph "Buck" Phillips, New York State Police Superintendent Wayne Bennett emphasized that those who attack the police will be hunted down at any cost. As opposed to, say, someone who merely shoots an optometrist in Virginia. "You're not gonna shoot one of our people and get away with it."

Is this an example of further encroachment of a police state? Not really — it's always been standard operating procedure. But isn't granting agents of the state special powers and protections a small step towards tyranny? Exactly the opposite, according to Superintendent Bennett. "Shooting at the people who protect society . . . that can never be tolerated, that's tyranny." — Mark Rand

"Conversations" on Race — Jim Crow is alive and well at CBS. The network has announced that contestants in the next "Survivor" will be divided into ethnic "tribes" including a black team, a white team, a Hispanic team, and an Asian team.

Defenders of the change argue that it will stimulate a "conversation on race." No doubt. This scenario certainly raises some intriguing questions to start off this conversation. What will be done about people of mixed black and white ancestry? Will the producers of "Survivor" assign them to the black team on the basis of the "one-drop" rule as used in the Homer Plessy case of 1896? Will the segregation be extended to separate drinking fountains and restrooms? Will contestants who quit be considered "traitors to their races?" — David Beito

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