Control freaks.

• Author: Gillespie, Nick
• Position: Editor's Note - Editorial

THE THEME OF this issue might be dubbed "control freaks." Several of this month's stories unmask ways in which the relatively powerful try to boss around the relatively powerless--typically with impunity and almost always in the name of some vaguely defined greater good.

Consider James Bovard's searing expose of the "sorry record of the Transportation Security Administration," the newly minted federal agency charged with making U.S. air travel safe from global terrorism (page 24). We titled this story "Dominate. Intimidate. Control." after a motto posted at a TSA training center. As Bovard, whose new book Terrorism and Tyranny is a must-read for those interested in civil liberties in the post-9/11 world, writes, that slogan all-too-aptly summarizes the "federal mentality toward air travelers" In rich, infuriating detail, Bovard documents the routine incompetence of the nation's air marshals and baggage checkers, who have been far more successful at hassling airline passengers than they have been at ferreting out real threats to national security. Not for nothing was the TSA called "a monster" by the chairman of the House Aviation Subcommittee, Rep.John Mica (R-Fla.).

Then there's Associate Editor Matt Welch's "Injustice by Default," (page 42) which reports on the unintended consequences of the legitimate, and in most ways successful, effort to get deadbeat dads to support their kids. In California and other states, thousands of men have been wrongly named as fathers and have had their wages garnished...