Everybody say Amen!

This column by renowned statist Garrison Keillor is so great that I had to do a Web search just to confirm it was really written by Keillor. (Well, you've seen the "George Carlin" e-mails, haven't you?)

"The way to stop terrorists on planes is to encourage passengers to bring loaded firearms aboard: guys in orange vests sitting in exit rows with deer rifles on their laps, ladies with Mr. Colt in their purses, kids with peashooters. Somebody wake up the NRA. Does the Second Amendment say 'The right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed except on commercial airliners'? Where is the right wing when you really need them? ...

"The jihadists we're afraid of are, so far as we know, young Muslim men from the Middle East, not old grandmas named Evelyn and Gladys married to soybean farmers, and not even old white guys like me, but nonetheless they pat us down for plastic explosives under our Sansabelts and have us raise our stockinged feet to be wanded for possible toe bombs. It's all to make us feel we're in a movie and it will have a happy ending. God forbid, somebody shows up at an airport somewhere in the world with an explosive tucked up in his lower colon ...

"It's all fine with me. I'm a liberal and we love ridiculous government programs that intrude on personal freedom. But where are the conservatives who used to object to this sort of thing?"

I'm still reeling that this came from Keillor. But as Lou Gossett's Drac says in a memorable scene in Enemy Mine: "Truth is truth."