and the conservatives who prop up their tiny macho ego's...

Blind -eading-the-blind is the Executive Branch instructions to criminal justice.

Kill a few kids with your macho paranoia, go ahead, you have permission from the 'Decider'...

Do it you pussy cops, come on, too scared to shoot a chick,

No, I don't think so,

I'm betting they just wanted to strip search her while she was still alive, so they could feed on on fear...like all bullies.

Thanks,

The 'us constitution' and 'bill of rights' (formerly capitalized) will be removed from encyclopedias and dictionarys nationwide, as they are a threat to Martial Law.

My major point, all you anonymous trigger happy folk, is that bombs don't look like circutboards with blinky lights on them. My concern is that boston police go apeshit over things with LEDs on them, not things that look like real bombs. My worry is that we're looking for the "terrorist" equivalent of a guy in a roaccon mask carrying a black ball with a cartoon fuse sticking out of it and probably a sack with a big $ on the side. BOMBS AREN'T COVERD IN BLINKING LIGHTS.

I think there are some important facts being ignored here.

1. Star did not go to the airport to fly; she went to pick someone up. She wasn't planning to get on a plane or go through security. So all this about "would you want to sit next to that?!?!" hysteria is inappropriate.

2. She did make some errors; most notably, when someone behind a desk asked her what the blinky thing was, she didn't explain it to them. That's why the police reacted, and since the desk minion doesn't know anything about bombs and could only say hysteria-inducing things like "wires and some kind of putty", the police responded the way they were trained: with overwhelming force.

Now. Do you think it's appropriate that security responds with overwhelming force to every incident? Another headline had a bunch of streets shut down in Charleston today because of a suspicious package. Certainly, a lot of people prefer a better-safe-than-sorry approach to security, and anyone who innocently gets caught in the crossfire is either not actually innocent, or is an acceptable casualty.

I think that better-safe-than-sorry is actually the best way to guarantee that we, as a society, are pretty damn sorry. Once someone who knows a breadboard from a bomb looked at her, why wasn't she immediately released? Got to justify the reaction. And besides, anyone who gets machine guns pointed at them must have been doing something wrong.

Security forces these days are training to respond to any action with overwhelming force. When the world bank met a while back, the heavily armed police officers outnumbered protesters.

So let us not talk about airports or undergrads with LEDs. Let us talk about the change in security tactics and procedures and where it's gonna get us. Everything is indeed different after 9/11 - we accept greater surveillance and security, without question, and blame anyone who sets off a response. In this day and age, they should have known better.

We should all know better.

Speeder, very well said and I couldn't agree more.

Apparently no one is safe in this crazy terrorists fear filled World. This student who was just being creative and wearing her creation is now in danger of losing her freedom because we have become a nation who is so paranoid that one officer stated she is lucky to be in jail and not in the morgue. I do not believe that a real terrorist would wear blinking lights to draw attion to him/herself before setting off a bomb device.

Roosevelt said "all we have to fear is fear itself". When are we going to realize that we cannot live our lives in fear and stop jumping to conclusions about every thing we see or hear.

According to the WBZ correspondent, the cops actually were carrying submachine guns: HK MP5s. Which is even worse. This is supposed to be one of the most accurate machine pistols, but it's still a fucking pistol. Which means that they would have been spraying fire all over the place.

But that's OK, right, authoritarians? A little collateral damage is acceptable, as long as they kill the brown girl acting the slightest bit unusual.

and not to my suprise "Farhad Manjoo" would be writing about it. The more I read the more it confirmed the weakness of this country. You are all right, we should allow people to do whatever they want all, get rid of the police, get rid of the military, lets all hold hands and smell flowers all day.

What do we need security at an airport for, surely no one wants to hi-jack a plane and crash it into buildings. Why would anyone want to do that?

It's official. US citizens now no longer have the rights to display, in any way, a homemade circuit board with lights in public. First the Aqua Teen Hunger Force thing, now this. Well, I guess it can be said that you still technically have the right to do so, but then the police have a right to point loaded guns at your head and arrest you.

Let's see, what other rights have we lost? We've lost right to have a private telephone conversation with anybody outside of the united states. Virtually any kind of human rights (right to move freely, right to food, water, sanitary facilities) in airports are now completely gone. The right to assemble is gone, as protesting anywhere near King George II will get you instantly arrested (or shot). The right to criticize the military is virtually gone (as evidence by King George II's remarks, and the Senate vote). The right to be safe in our own country is gone (good luck, New Orleans!). Well, those are just off the top of my head, but I'm sure I'm missing plenty.

Americans are stupid and scared. As long as most Americans lack even a basic education, and along with that, the ability to reason beyond "Do I want to Super-Size that?", we're going to see this kind of insanity continue.

The really disappointing part of this whole fiasco is not that Americans are dumb and can be manipulated. That's a bummer, but the rest of that would be able to live among them if only those same dim-witted people had some kind of sense of moral decency in which it's wrong, morally and ethically, to point large, loaded weapons at a college student's head and threaten to violently kill her because she's wearing a cool piece of art. Hell, these people don't even follow their bible that most of them are convinced is the literal word of "God" ("Thou shall not kill", anybody?).

Let's work on educating everybody, and instill in them a kind of moral decency that organized religion simply doesn't provide. Once people have both an education, and a sense of right and wrong, people will not let this kind of thing happen.