THE WORST DEFENSE OF JUAN WILLIAMS, SO FAR. The prize goes to Eric Scheie of Classical Values -- though he gets a big assist from fellow buffoon Clayton Cramer, whom he quotes:

A friend works for TSA, and tells me that under certain conditions, TSA screeners will be taking actions that ordinarily involve dinner and a movie first--including patdowns to the genital area for explosive devices hidden there. He is not thrilled at this prospect--actually, he is absolutely horrified.

I have several reactions:

1. Please explain why such an intimate search is preferable to ethnic profiling.

First, you've seen Clayton Cramer, right? I totally believe a genital patdown is what he's accustomed to expect after dinner and a movie.

Second, if patdowns vs. profiling is really the choice Cramer sees here, I imagine he's a real treat on flights: "Sit by the wing? I'm not a terrorist! Why don't you make that Arab sit by the wing?"

Thanks CC, Scheie will take it from here. First he quotes himself:

If we're going to talk about giving up some rights for the safety of everybody, doesn't it seem logical that the fewer people who have to give up rights, the better?

That's delicious. I'm going to dress up as a Libertarian for Halloween, and use Scheie's argument to defend antebellum slavery. "Hey, no reason why EVERYONE hadda be slaves!"

Instead, there seems to be growing tacit acceptance of an absurd proposition -- that it is better to let people who want to blow themselves up fly and look up everyone's butthole than look up the buttholes only of people who want to blow themselves up.

Yes, the butthole bit's bolded in the original, perhaps so your mind's ear might hear it in a big, tuff voice, convincing you that, yes, Eric Scheie is that awesome, he can figure out which passengers want to blow themselves up ahead of time so we can just probe them (plus a bunch of other Arabs, but come on -- when did they get rights?)

Or maybe the bold buttholes are just part of an anal obsession:

Is the goal to move toward a world where people who believe in religious suicide have a right to fly, and to better facilitate this we will all bend over to accommodate them?

Why say ye, citizens? Shall we bend over, and open ourselves to the dusky intruders? (You usually don't hear this sort of thing from gay people, even from gay Republicans; it's usually the more excitable straight ones who go all tough-guy-tension-reliever on you. Maybe Scheie's trying to pass.)

The worst aspect of this, is that if you are in any position of responsibility, you're not allowed to say what I just said.

Wait for it...

As a perfect example, Juan Williams was fired by NPR today simply for speaking his mind.

Aaaand scene. Williams is too busy celebrating his cash firing bonus from Fox to be bothered, but this is rather like getting a personal recommendation from a local schizophrenic that begins "Cabbages, knickers, it's not got a beak" and ends "a man after my own heart!"

As for me, since everybody seems to be asking each other this, no, I wouldn't have fired Juan Williams, because I would never have hired Juan Williams in the first place. He makes Alan Colmes look like Alexander fucking Cockburn.