ROAD TO DUMBASS-KISS.

I know some of my readers who are over the age of 30 may be wondering when conservatives began agitating for the rights of people on the no-fly list? Answer: Very recently! Because back in the day no-fly lists were all the rage among the rageaholics -- in the Bush years, because it was saving us from Terrah, and in the early Obama years because Obama was keeping it from saving us from Terrah. But now that Democrats are craftily using the list against the NRA with their no-fly no-buy bill, conservatives have suddenly (and, I assure you, temporarily) turned into Clarence Darrow.

Let's look at some old National Review items on the no-fly subject for perspective. Here's Greg Polowitz asking, "If [shoe-bomber Faisal] Shahzad Was on the ‘No Fly’ List, How’d He Get on the Plane?" Here's Andrew C. McCarthy lamenting that "a lot of [terrorism-related] information gets exchanged – but a lot doesn’t – and none of it ever makes it to the no-fly list."

Here's Anne Morse complaining that the ACLU was suing because "the 'no-fly list' violates passengers’ right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure," at which she scoffed and said the ACLU was partly to blame for "security procedures that are lax, politically correct, and likely to lead to another 9/11." (Morse also promoted the Arabs-on-planes-make-me-nervous bullshit of Anne Jacobsen, then popular among wingnuts; Jacobsen later went on to promote an even more bizarre terror-in-the-skies scenario.)

Here's Jay Nordlinger fuming at the ACLU's suit because "The administration is trying to protect us from mass murder, and the ACLU is trying to thwart that effort."

And here's Skree Queen Michelle Malkin raging that the list was not complete enough: If we were truthful, she said, "the 'no fly' list would be known around the world by its right and proper name: the 'go fly' list... to this day, TSA still doesn’t check all domestic and international airline-passenger manifests against the no-fly/go-fly list," etc.

So the NR people were once upon a time mainly concerned that the no-fly list wasn't restrictive enough. But when, more recently, it became apparent that the ability of no-fly listees to purchase weapons could be used against them in the court of public gun opinion, they started to get nervous -- as was glaringly apparent from the very title of this 2015 post "The NRA Is Absolutely Right to Fear the ‘Terrorism Watch List,’" by Charles C.W. Cooke, who was then only recently imported by National Review and so did not have the paper trail of no-fly rah-rah that his colleagues had. The magazine's Cato Institute loaners have also been useful in this respect: Here's Michael Tanner, announcing "the no-fly list clearly violates the presumption that a person is innocent until proven guilty," to the chuckles of older readers.

This week NR has promoted an anti-no-fly-list article by an intern, which makes sense, because he's probably not only too young to have any embarrassing published opinions on Bush-era civil-liberties outrages to his credit, but also being indulged in the traditional youthful libertarian phase, the conservative equivalent of Rumspringa.

Better late than never, I guess. And who knows -- maybe associating civil rights they're not so hot about with guns will make conservatives more likely to support them. I know: Let's tell them that married gay people fuck each other with AR-15s!