Hooray for the New York Times for emphasizing the central lesson of the near disaster on a Christmas Day flight to Detroit when alert passengers and crew members halted a terrorist who was trying to blow up the plane. The billions of dollars spent by the people who profess to be protecting our security had done nothing to protect us. Yet in the aftermath of this breakdown, we are being subjected to claims that more spending, more machines, more oppressive security measures are needed. When will the media wake up to the fact that the security apparatus that forces us to take off our shoes and submit to other nonsense is simply fighting the last war and wasting our money in pretending to fight the next one?

Let’s chuck the machines, save our billions, or most of them, and put air marshals on every flight. I’ll bet the passengers will still get there first.