Laugh or cry?

The 9/11 terrorists may have been stupid enough to think that disabling the Twin Towers would cripple American capitalism. But they were smart enough to realize that terror and the ensuing fears leavened with just enough bureaucratic-political stupidity would hand them a win. Our TSA and it's patrons provide pretty clear evidence.

Art Carden provides a lucid summary here.

Bob Poole has been arguing for saner measures for a long time here.

Reason.tv has chimed in with great commentary and video here and here.

Is our "cerebral" but recently "shellacked" President going to cede this one to the Tea Party too?

UPDATE

The WSJ's Eric Felten finishes his wonderful column on TSA nuttiness with this:

The old saw is that a conservative is a liberal who got mugged. Tom Wolfe riffed that "a liberal is a conservative who has been arrested." We might add one more variation: A libertarian is anyone whose wife and children have had their groins groped by the TSA.