You can't really blame passengers for being edgy about an Arabic family making comments about 'safety', whetever they may have been, while there's still a war on. So the FBI is called, checks the family out, and pronounces them harmless. That should have been the end of it. AirTran gate agents had no right whatever to prevent them from boarding after that.

May this family end up owning AirTran. They would probably do a better job of running it than the petty tyrants who held their own investigative skills above those of the FBI itself.

"Plunging oil prices are also expected to place severe strains on the governments of Iran, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela"

Three horrible dictatorships whose total collapse should be roundly cheered by us all. When they go, where is the international terror apparatus going to get its funding?

"But thank Marx-Lenin, that the airlines do such a horrible job being a business that soon enough they will all of them collapse. "

In a free market, that would indeed happen, and good riddance. Crappy airlines would have to liquidate and their assets would pass into stronger hands. Unfortunately, the bad airlines are staying in business through a combination of bailouts (I'm sorry, we're supposed to call them "federal loans") and getting governments to help enforce their silly rules.

If we're going to bail out the airlines once again, why don't we insist on a passenger input to company policies? After all, they will be using, just like all the other times, our money. Let's force them to make those non-refundable tickets transferable. Let's make them tell the truth about flight delays. Let's require that lost baggage be compensated, and that the funds are to come directly out of executive bonuses. How about automatic dismissal for gratuitous rudeness?

Bailouts may be expensive, but this is going to be fun.

"It's roughly where it was before the unprecedented spike we just endured!!!"

Not exactly. I visited New Orleans one month before Katrina, and I can remember noting the price of regular in suburban Kenner, LA as being a memorably low $2.09 at the time. In my state it's now at $1.49 .

What a pair! She comes off as spoiled and he as lazy. Still. both seem to be taking needed first steps toward changing their habits. Let's hope they can keep that up.

Conservation is great for getting instant results in a crisis. This morning's balance of trade shows that we're importing a lot less oil than we did last year, precisely because everybody is out of work.

Though liberal bloggers who clip trust fund coupons for a living may thing conservation is the answer to our whole energy problem, those of us who want to eventually go back to work again need new energy production. Toyota isn't building all those cars with "conservation," but because Japan believes in generating its own electricity.

Something tells me that given the current economy the annual whinefest over college costs and admissions is already last year's story. The children of Salonistas are going to be bringing their Blackberries to State this fall, while the prestige schools will be left to grow ivy alone.

"On the other hand, I agree with you that Congress has come across lately like a clumsy, flea-bitten bunch of "bozos." Its poll ratings are lower than stinking swamp mud. I have a soft spot for the nimble Nancy Pelosi, a master of the ladylike stiletto thrust, but Harry Reid is a cadaverous horse's ass of mammoth proportions. How in the world did that whiny, sniveling incompetent end up as Senate majority leader? Give him the hook! "

The only way to render Harry Reid safe for future generations is to stuff him into Yucca Mountain just ahead of all the nuclear waste. The bad news is that Harry Reid, unlike that nuclear waste, will never be recycled into anything useful.

He hasn't even taken office yet, and most of the ugliness is coming from the perpetually angry, agenda-waving, whiny bitch left.

"If you say climate change theory is wrong - show me the more complete model and better and more extensive data to tell me what the real effect of the changes in CO2 concentration are, not just politically or philosophically inspired gut reaction."

For informed skepticism about the Warmist faith, talk to any geologist. They tell us that the climate has been continually changing, and massively, for the entire four billion years of Earth's history. Comparatively little of this period has been affected by human industry of any sort.

When Keillor stays away from political whining, he can still be great.

Then you need to make sure that Bill McKibben and Joesph Romm have no input into the planning. They are anti-industrial hippies who consider mankind a stain upon the sacred Earth.

"Camille, the reason Air America is a dud is pretty obvious to me. Liberals don't fall for the simple screeds and scapegoats that are more effectively used on conservative reactionary listeners..."

So how do you explain Keith Olbermann?

...such as solar panels and wind turbines, never make the mistake of putting liberals to work implementing them! Their purpose in life is not to find solutions to any problem, but to find objections, even to their own suggested solutions. Corn turned out to be a poor source of biofuel, so now the Luddites are trying to prevent any other biofuel solutions from being tried. They call it the "precautionary principle": don't try anything new, because it might at some point involve complications.

Futurist Bruce Sterling recently pointed out that the people at work actually installing solar panels are roofing contractors. The people actually building windmills are drawn from the oil field worker community. It takes the can-do, drill-baby-drill culture to actually build any of those dreams you have in mind. Turn them loose to work and shut up.