Senator Jackson, call your office

Trouser snakes on a plane

So maybe it wasn't that big:

A couple's ill-concealed sexual play aboard a Southwest Airlines flight from Los Angeles got them charged with violating the Patriot Act, intended for terrorist acts, and could land them in jail for 20 years.

According to their indictment, Carl Persing and Dawn Sewell were allegedly snuggling and kissing inappropriately, "making other passengers uncomfortable," when a flight attendant asked them to stop.

"Persing was observed nuzzling or kissing Sewell on the neck, and ... with his face pressed against Sewell's vaginal area. During these actions, Sewell was observed smiling," reads the indictment filed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation...

If pretending to join the Mile High Club turns out to be a violation of the Save Us From Terrorists law, a big bunch O Congressmen are going to come out and say, "Hey! That's not what we thought we were voting for." But the very existence of PATRIOT is simply another reason to disbelieve that the Dems will actually be able to accomplish anything:

"We killed the Patriot Act," boasted Minority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat, to cheers from a crowd at a political rally after the vote.

Sen. Robert C. Byrd, West Virginia Democrat, invoked abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in defending his vote against the Patriot Act. "Earlier today, the Senate voted to stop a bill that would have allowed the abuses of American civil liberties to continue for another four years," he said in a floor statement.

"Mission Accomplished," eh, Harry?

In all fairness to Harry, he follows a well-established Democratic tradition: he supported it before he opposed it before he supported it:

I support the PATRIOT Act. I voted for it in 2001, and I voted for a reauthorization bill that passed the Senate unanimously last summer. In December, however, I voted against cloture on a conference report to reauthorize the PATRIOT ACT.

Now if anyone wants to complain that I'm picking on Nerdy Harry for what is really a crime of el Presidente', I can only plead that back when the GOP controlled everything, I promised to spend my time picking mostly on them because they were in change. The GOP ran the show and the Dems got a pass because they didn't matter.

But guess what, Harry? Now you matter.

I should not be at all surprised if when PATRIOT again expires, this time in the middle of President Rodham's administration, it'll be the Dems who declare that overbearing federal legislation is needed to keep snakes off the planes.

After all, Samuel L. Jackson can't be eveywhere.