WHO AMONG US did not feel a little shiver of mean delight last week at the news that Sen. Edward M. Kennedy had not once but five times been told he could not board a commercial plane? The image of a genuine Washington pooh-bah falling afoul of the government's inane security system was one to savor.
But now that we've had the advantage of a period of sober reflection, we're inclined to ponder: Is this idiotic, or what?
The government keeps lists of suspected terrorists who aren't allowed to fly, and leaves it up to the airlines to enforce it. It's not at all clear how easy it is to get on one of these lists, but it's all too obvious that it's virtually impossible to get off one. Apparently the people who run US Airways had a no-fly list that included a certain "Kennedy," so that meant that the senior senator from Massachusetts -- incidentally the most famous member of the world's greatest deliberative body -- was kept off the plane by the airline's by-the-book gate agents until superiors were called upon to waive him aboard. That this happened in Washington was astonishing; that it also happened in Boston is stupefying.