The TSA promised to get serious about security after the latest fiasco with the holiday underwear bomber… that is just as soon as they finish playing jokes.

PHILADELPHIA — A college student returning to school after the winter break fell victim to a prank at Philadelphia’s airport by a Transportation Security Administration worker who pretended to plant a plastic bag of white powder in her carryon luggage. ~ Fox News

Comes from Matt Welch over at Reason (although he wrote it for CNN), and it should serve as a useful answer for everybody who wants to play “Let’s try to scare the right-wing by talking about scaaaaaaary foreign corporations:”

“Let’s boil it down to the essential words: Political documentary, banned, government.”

You can safely assume that anybody not taking the point is probably not going to. One way, or the other.

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

Jules Crittenden, on John Kerry, and the way he’s been (and will keep being) upstaged by Scott Brown:

It’s like a weird and terrible destiny. Not quite a Kennedy, not much as a senator, not quite president, and now, when his party holds White House, House and Senate, and he’s racked up all the seniority, not quite relevant.

There is something malignant about the way that karma keeps catching up with the now-senior Senator for Massachusetts… or, maybe there’s not.

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

…tool of the left Chrissy Matthews??

The world really has turned upside-down.

The next thing you know a Republican will be elected to Ted Kennedy’s old seat.

Ummm, wait…

h/t Hot Air

…oh, wait. We’re the 52 now.

As Moe points out in his own inestimable way, Huffington Post and a large part of the left has got it in their heads that Scott Brown’s Cosmo spread (I know this is a real bad choice of words but it is what it is), his wife wearing a bikini in a music video, and his daughters wearing bikinis is some kind of killer argument.

I don’t get this whole line of attack. Scott Brown is a handsome, studly guy who looks good enough to get paid for posing sans clothes. He, unsurprisingly at least to me, married a hot chick, and, equally unsurprising to anyone with even a passing knowledge of biology, has two hot daughters. His wife and daughters have also been known to wear bikinis and look pretty damn good in the process (Amanda Marcotte or Ana Marie Cox should be so freakin lucky). If that is character assassination I’d only wish that I the bastards would come after me.

Thanks to Big Government:

Geo. Will Gold: “The essence of contemporary liberalism is the illiberal conviction that Americans, in their comprehensive incompetence, need minute supervision by government, which liberals believe exists to spare citizens the torture of thinking and choosing”

While doing some back-and-forth with a Massachusetts liberal friend of mine he totally revealed this to be true, at one point telling me that there is a “social contract” and that “so what” if a majority of people oppose Obamacare.

Krauthammer Gold: ” ‘If you lose Massachusetts and that’s not a wake-up call,’ said moderate — and sentient — Democratic Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana, ‘there’s no hope of waking up.’ I say: Let them sleep.”

As Hotline on Call notes here in passing: the RNC reported 6.6 million raised (CoH of 8.4 million*), but nobody else really has yet.

Which is why no post yet on the topic.

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

*Hotline points out that the CoH number is down because of the VA & NJ gubernatorial races (and health care). [pause] Yes. Yes, it is. It’ll be down some more because of the MA-SEN race, too.

Fine by me.

It’s not every week in which two of the most odious figures in contemporary politics; Sen. John McCain (R – Egoland), and President Barack Hubris Obama get their commuppence. Why have both egocentric fools gotten hoist upon their petards? Feckless overreach!

The election of Scott Brown to the Senate has sent Barack Obama a simple message. “We ain’t Hahvad Edumacayted; but we ain’t stupid neether…” He can no longer pee upon our legs and tell us it’s raining out. If he wants a health care bill or a carbon tax, he may well get such a thing – if he’s a lot more honest, respectful and willing to compromise.

As for Senator Smug-Cloud, the Supreme Court victory for Citizens United should remind Sir Richard Head that even “Mavaricks” don’t get to take a pass on the Constitution to enact their latest legislative whim.

It’s a pleasure to see both McCain and Obama get smacked down in the same week. Ah, Democracy in our Representative Republic. What a beautiful thing!

Baron Hill trails by 8 in the perpetual battle between him and Mark Souder to determine who’ll represent Indiana’s 9th Congressional district:

A new SurveyUSA poll for the liberal blog Firedoglake shows Hill trailing former Rep. Mike Sodrel (R-Ind.), 49-41.

Hill has won three of four consecutive matchups with Sodrel, including by 20 points in 2008. That means the race has seen a net 28-point swing in 14 months. That’s troubling if you’re Hill, who has made overtures about running for governor in 2012.

Hill joins Reps. Vic Snyder (D-Ark.) and Steve Driehaus (D-Ohio) in trailing by wide margins. Snyder announced his retirement soon after the poll was released.

Firedoglake has now polled four districts. The incumbent Democrats have trailed by 17, 17 and 9 points in three of them and led by 2 percent in another — Rep. Tim Bishop’s (D-N.Y.)

Nominally, FireDogLake is conducting these polls in an attempt to expedite passage of a national health care plan.

Here’s how it works:

Step 1) Conduct polls showing Dem incumbents getting waxed by GOP
Step 2) ???????
Step 3) NATIONAL HEALTH CARE!