I haven't written about Wikileaks because I am not finished reading about it. I do think that even in a free society a government has a legitimate interest in keeping at least some things secret. But I also think that only a fool would accept, uncritically, the government's own assessment of which secrets it needs to keep. In American law, the state secret privilege — the notion that the government can ask a court to dismiss any lawsuit seeking to vindicate any right, no matter how important, by saying that it will reveal state secrets — is a sham founded on perjury and fraud. People who work for the government will always try to keep as many things secret as they can, because it hides their misconduct, makes them feel important, supports their feeling that citizens are unwashed hoi-palloi who don't know what's good for them, and seems "safer" — in an cover-my-ass sense — than being open.

So it should be no surprise that governments — national, state, and local — continue to make facially ridiculous claims that some things must be secret. Like, for instance, the New Jersey Department of Public Affairs, which believes that national security justifies concealing information about the building of a government barn used to house road salt, under a public order that justifies ignoring the state's open records act when necessary to “protect and defend the state and its citizens against acts of sabotage or terrorism.”

A robust discussion about what government documents ought to be secret is good. A servile and gullible concession that the government can be trusted to draw, and toe, that line is bad.

Via KipEsquire.

It's time for the Road to Popehat, the feature in which we throw open the hood, look at the traffic logs to see what searches brought you here, and ask ourselves if it would really be so terrible if the whole WikiLeaks thing took down the entire internet.

can a demonically possessed mom give birth to a demonically possessed son? . . . Mom?

thanksgiving jokes for Jehova's witnesses: Dude, who is booking your appearances?

is comedy a 1st amendment violation? No, Governor, it isn't.

charities that stop bullies in TX: here ya go.

what would happen if I punched the TSA officer for groping me: Well, we might blog it.

pics of large breasted women in North Wales: Rule 34 is just another way of saying there are some extremely picky motherfuckers out there.

what are safety hazards of being a lawyer: Traumatic brain injury, from beating your head against your desk.

dicks, tasers: . . . laughter!

what does the jury look for in an innocent child molester? That so sounds like one of my clients.

why is the popehat blog down: Well, it's the season, really. It's always tough. And we haven't been taking our medication. Plus, the older we get, the more we want to ask — is this all that there is? Isn't there some . . . oh wait. Did you mean this?

celebrity intentional infliction of emotional distress: Few practitioners know that there are three, not two, emotional distress torts in California: negligent infliction, intentional infliction, and celebrity intentional infliction, which is intentional infliction of emotional distress inflicted by a celebrity. Right now the California Supreme Court is considering whether the third applies when a person is unquestionably a celebrity, but is one for no logical or legally cognizable reason. The Kardashians filed an amicus brief. In crayon.

And last, but not least, a recurring theme:

popehat shut the fuck up Yeah, ok. I'm done here.

Students of conspiracy theory should dig around a bit on the curious writings of his primary accuser.  Assange's very competent British defense counsel would absolutely destroy this woman in an adversarial court, but he may not get that opportunity if he's extradited to Sweden.

The interesting questions revolve the extent to which Assange's prosecution is being underwritten or otherwise pressured by governments Assange has embarrassed, principally our own.  I believe that to be the case on zero evidence, but only because I trust the government less than I trust Assange, who has never lied to me.

At any rate, you can bet the powers that be aren't discussing this by diplomatic cable.

Remember Christopher Maloney? Agreeing with P.Z. Myers, I called Maloney a quack, because he's an advocate of naturopathy who suggests that black elderberry will block the H1N1 virus. I also suggested that he might be a censorious douche, a claim that I retracted and clarified when some different quack appeared and took the credit for getting a blog critical of Maloney pulled. Maloney encountered the Streissand Effect, and was quite whiny about it both over at Myers' blog and here:

Ok, let’s have you irritate someone with a national following and get spammed all day by idiots who have no degree and less information about science. I’ve already explained to PZ’s other minions that you are not scientists, you are a mob. Many of you are reasonable human beings, but some of you like to leave threatening messages. I’m not sure, when I have to call the police to check on a threat, is that enough of a threat or is that just whining? And, no, I haven’t actually been burned at the stake, but several of you have offered. What a loverly group of fundies you all turn out to be.

I'm pretty sure that the "national following" part refers to Myers and not to us.

Anyway, if the prior evidence that Maloney is a censorious douche turned out to be mistaken, he's thoughtfully provided new evidence, in the form of a bumptious legal threat to Myers. Maine attorney Maeghan Maloney — who is also a newly elected state representative, and may or may not be related to Christopher Maloney — demanded that Myers retract his statement that Maloney is a quack "within seven (7) business days." Presumably that last is intended to make it clear that the word "seven" is equivalent to the Arabic numeral "7", even for naturopaths.

Meaghan Maloney's legal theory — to use the phrase generously — is that though Myers may have a First Amendment right to say that naturopathy is bunk, the Great State of Maine recognizes and licenses naturopaths, and therefore it is libel per se to say that Christopher Maloney is a quack. Under Maloney's legal theory, if someone convinced some legislative or bureaucratic arm of the State of Maine that a therapist can cure cancer by beating the patient with a live five-pound lobster, it would be libel per se to call lobster-wielding therapists quacks as well.

The problem with this legal theory is that it's a load of utter naturopathy. "Christopher Maloney is a quack" is quintessential opinion, and therefore absolutely protected under the First Amendment to the United States constitution. Pure opinion is not subject to defamation suits. Opinion that implies false facts can be the subject of a defamation suit — but only if those false facts are themselves subject to defamation analysis. The opinion "I think Meaghan Maloney is a bad lawyer, as people convicted of molesting squirrels tend to be," is potentially defamatory, because it implies that Meaghan Maloney has been convicted of molesting squirrels, which presumably she has not been. But "Meaghan Maloney is a bad lawyer because she is making bumptious threats in an effort to stop people from criticizing junk science" is not subject to defamation analysis, because the opinion component implies other opinions, not false facts. In this case, Meyers made it very clear that he viewed Maloney as a quack because Maloney is an advocate and practitioner of naturopathy. Meaghan Maloney admits that Myers has a protected right to call naturopathy quackery. That settles it.

I wonder whether, before sending her feckless and thuggish missive, Meaghan Maloney researched how courts have treated the word "quack" in defamation cases. I did. It took me about five minutes to learn that multiple courts in multiple states in multiple decades have found that calling someone a "quack" is protected opinion and not subject to a defamation suit, particularly when the context shows that it is hyperbole. Yiamouyiannis v. Thompson, 764 S.W.2d 338 (TX 1989) (calling an opponent of flouridation and vaccines a “quack” was pure opinion protected by the First Amendment); Dowling v. Livingstone, 108 Mich. 321 (1896) (it was opinion, not defamation, to refer to an anti-immigration scheme as a “quack remedy”); Gonzalez v Gray, 69 F.Supp.2d 561 (S.D.N.Y. 1999) (husband’s claim that his wife had been having “sex with a quack” was opinion, not defamation against the doctor); Spelson v. CBS, INC., 581 F.Supp. 1195 (N.D. IL 1984) (statement that “nutritionist” treating cancer patients with “vitamins, minerals, and extracts of raw animal organs” was a “cancer quack” was protected opinion). In the rare cases where courts have not protected terms like “quack,” they were used in a context specifically suggesting untrue facts. See, e.g., Nasr v. Connecticut General Life Insurance Company, 632 F.Supp.1024 (E.D. IL 1986) (though calling a doctor a “quack” has been found to be protected opinion, when used in manner suggesting false underlying facts, it was actionable). Courts have made similar findings regarding other epithets, including “charlatan.” Ernst v. Basset, 521 So.2d 414 (La. 1988) (“charlatan” was non-actionable statement of opinion).

In short, if Christopher and Meaghan Maloney follow through on their threat with a lawsuit, Myers should be able to prevail. Regrettably, Maine has a weak-ass SLAPP statute that only applies to petitions to the government — a circumstance that weighs in favor of a national anti-SLAPP statute. But if the Amazing Naturopathic Maloni do sue, Myers should sue their asses for malicious prosecution after getting their censorious suit dismissed. Notwithstanding that Myers probably views me as evil, I would be happy to donate my time to assist his legal defense team in Maine. I've won some SLAPP motions, and attorney fees, in my time.

If these people think this threat would deter PZ Myers, they haven't done their due diligence on him. Of course, it's possible that Meaghan Maloney issued this stupid, stupid threat merely to make Christopher Maloney feel good about himself, or merely to make him think she was doing something. If she did — and if she didn't advise her client that the natural and probable result of her threat was to increase, dramatically, the number of people reading posts calling him a quack and writing new posts calling him a quack — then she's a damned fool and a shitty lawyer, whatever her relationship to him is. Clients want to do angry, foolish things; a decent lawyer's job is to stop them. Even if they are quacks.

This is what your state government thinks about due process:

My partner is representing a contractor. The California's Contractors State License Board wants to take his license away based on an (untrue) allegation of misconduct. My partner has just finished the first day of a hearing before an Administrative Law Judge, to which the client is entitled under state law.

My partner came into my office and described his discussion with the Deputy Attorney General representing the Board in the hearing. "He told me I ought to take the deal he's offering, which is basically to submit to revocation of the license. He says the hearing is a waste of time, because if the Board doesn't agree with the ALJ's ruling, the Registrar of Contractors will just ignore the ruling and revoke the client's license anyway."

"He said that?" I ask, aghast.

"I have a recording of him saying it," confirms my partner.

"Holy shit!" says I — for it is my role in the firm to police and worry about such things — "You didn't record him without his knowledge in violation of state law, did you?"

"Nope" says my partner. "He didn't just say it in person. He said that in a message he left on my voicemail."

Yes. A Deputy Attorney General is so openly contemptuous of the appearance of due process afforded by California administrative law that he's willing to say, in a recording, that the State of California will just ignore the results of an administrative hearing if it doesn't like those results. He didn't say it would happen just in select cases where the head of the agency determines, after careful review, that the Administrative Law Judge made a grave error of fact or law. Nope, it was a straight out "if we win, we win, if we lose, we ignore it and do what we want anyway."

That made me mad, at first. But then I thought about it. Really, who can blame him for being contemptuous of a meaningless waste of time? At least he's honest. California law does, in fact, allow agencies to ignore the findings of Administrative Law Judges — who are, quite frankly, hardly pro-client — and substitute their own judgment. We can apply for a writ of mandamus in Superior Court to overturn that decision at considerable additional expense and delay.

As I've argued before, most of the justice system serves to create an illusion of justice, not to seek justice. Our government, and welcome to it.

One of the best signs of being a decent person, rather than an asshole, is the willingness to laugh at your own side in politics.

In that spirit, I hope that Objectivists and large-L libertarians won't mind if I laugh at this story, discovered courtesy of Alex Knapp of Outside the Beltway, about Founders College: an institution of higher learning designed for followers of Ayn Rand that went out of business because, in part, it could not pay its bills, could not attract enough students, and couldn't get federal funding in the form of taxpayer-backed student loans:

Founders College, in rural South Boston, Va., was pitched as a sort of Great Books college for devotees of Ayn Rand. And while the for-profit college was never accredited, it operated with authorization from Virginia to issue degrees.

. . .

Where most colleges saw degrees, [Gary L. Hull] saw a hodgepodge of classes and incoherent goals. He hoped to create an objectivist college where all students would have the same academic foundation and be taught to think rationally.

Apparently Founders' founders thought that thinking rationally means creating the appearance of success and indulging students in free education whilst sponging of of land-owning men of ability:

Around that time, the previous owners of the Berry Hill resort [where the college was built] were awarded a judgment of just over $3-million against the college for not paying a loan for the property, according to court documents.

None of the students at Founders, with the exception of Ms. Tong, were paying anywhere close to full tuition or room and board. Some were on full scholarships, they say, and others simply weren't paying, or paying very little, until they heard more about their eligibility for federal aid. Still, in the beginning, the students were living in resort-style rooms and eating gourmet meals.

"Friday nights were jazz nights, and we were able to sit with the public and order filet mignon and scallops," says Ms. Tong.

Based on this, it sounds as if any number of my clients are faithful Objectivists. Who knew?

Actually, I posted this not so much because it is funny but because I thought it would make Ezra happy.

Hey Jimmeeeeeeee!!! I mean, Barack. Some of us can actually read English!

There are lots of things to dislike about Barack Obama's temper tantrum of a press conference today: that he called his most fervent supporters, the ones to whom he sold a bill of goods two years ago, the ones who actually believed him, "sanctimonious."  Just exactly who is being sanctimonious here?

Then there's the boorishness of comparing his political opponents, who are probably actually right in this case, to "hostage takers".  (Note the left jargon MLA-speak: the plain English term is "kidnappers".)

But what does his statement say to those who are, you know, actually inclined to take hostages?  Official American policy has been, forever, and Jimmy Carter followed it, that we don't negotiate with terrorists, kidnappers, or extortionists.

Now we do?  If this is how Obama reacts to the threat of a filibuster, how will he behave when someone invades an embassy?  I think he'd be constrained to behave in a Presidential fashion by politics, but the Iranians and Al Qaeda don't know that.  And while it isn't Al Qaeda's style to make demands for the safe return of hostages, as opposed to killing them outright, they're nothing if not adaptable.

What a little man this President is turning out to be.

Imagine that several reasonably beloved people — a local sportscaster, a B-list celeb recently out of rehab, and, say, a friendly Irish Setter — are killed by handguns in California.

Say that Californians Against Handguns gets an initiative on the ballot saying simply "California's constitution is amended to reflect that handguns are illegal in the State of California." They argue that it doesn't violate the Second Amendment because it reasonably restricts only one category of easily concealable firearms, and that there is no reason to believe the the Framers — who had in mind big, obvious, hard-to-conceal-or-load-or-fire-or-even-carry guns — had Saturday Night Specials in mind when they wrote the Second Amendment.

Say several other mildly likable people get nined just before the election, and the initiative narrowly passes.

Say that Californians For Putting Holes In People Who Are Askin' For It files suit in federal court in, say, Orange County.

Say that a George W. Bush appointee, a rootin' tootin' shooter himself who is reputed to carry beneath his robes either a Desert Eagle or a particularly unsightly gunt, finds that the initiative violates the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Californians Against Handguns want an appeal. But the Governor and Attorney General agree with Judge Rootin' Tootin's ruling, possibly because of political and cultural affiliations, crass evaluations of impact on future elections, and contempt for the views and values of anti-gun folks. They refuse to appeal. Californians Against Handguns purports to appeal. Naturally, a major focus of the appeal becomes standing.

Who would be talking about the will of the people, and disregard for the same?

Who would be talking about un-elected black-robed tyrants?

Who would be talking about outrageous cultural and political bias among judges?

Who would be talking about a de-facto "veto" of the initiative by the Governor and Attorney General?

Who would be talking about the death of democracy?

I have guesses. They may not be the same as yours.

I've represented some difficult types — lawyers, doctors, internet phenoms, securities gurus, etc. — but I've never represented a professional pundit. That might be lack of contacts. It might be luck. Or it might be that, as a lawyer, I'm not willing to cave in to the client's demands, no matter how inane. That seems to disqualify me to represent modern pundits. As far as I can tell, when they go shopping for lawyers, they are looking for someone with no client control whatsoever — or, at least, someone willing to subordinate good lawyering to feckless theatricality.

Bill O'Reilly successfully cowed Fox's lawyers into an embarrassing doomed crusade to stop Al Franken's otherwise forgettable book, resulting in a judicial smackdown that was, given the circumstances, surprisingly mild. Michael Savage tried to work out his issues in a bizarre rant in lawsuit form; he and his tractable lawyer got their asses handed to them. Glenn Beck tried to sue a satirist and got thoroughly bitch-slapped.

But this phenomenon does not appear only when pundits are on the offense. Lawyers defending pundits also show a depressing and unprofessional willingness to indulge them.

Take the lawyers representing Pamela Geller, professional activist and well-known polemicist blogger.

Geller, who writes and talks an awful lot about how Islam will be the death of all of us any day now, was naturally drawn to the noisy and annoying tumult over Fathima Rifqa Bary. In brief, one contingent claimed that the young Bary was justifiably afraid that her Muslim parents would murder her for converting to Christianity and that she required the protection of the courts; the other side claimed that the fears were invented as part of an attempt to fan the flames of anti-Islamic sentiment. The legal portion of the dispute became moot when she turned 18. Determining what her teenaged estrangement was about, and what caused it, and what her relationship with her parents is now (or should be) is an exercise in sifting through conflicting and shouty claims of advocates.

Geller, not surprisingly, saw Bary as an icon of how Islam Will Destroy Us All, and wrote a number of Geller-style excitable things, including unflattering things about Omar Tarazi, who acted as the attorney for Bary's parents Mohamed Bary and Aysha Risana Bary in proceedings in their home state of Ohio. Tarazi didn't like that. He sued Geller for defamation in federal court in Ohio.

Tarazi's suit is not a model of good pleading. In his meandering narrative amended complaint, he asserts that Geller falsely stated that he was hired by CAIR, that CAIR is a criminal organization, and that he perjured himself in court documents about his connections to CAIR. Yet he intersperses those claims with complaints about Geller's social and political advocacy and statements of opinion about the case in general, even though that advocacy is very clearly protected by the First Amendment.

Tarazi's suit is very defensible by Geller. Most of the advocacy he complains about is inarguably protected. His complaint that Geller falsely stated that he was paid by CAIR conflicts, thematically, with his complaint that Geller wrongly called CAIR a criminal organization. After all, if (as he suggests) CAIR is a perfectly benign organization, how can it be defamatory to suggest that he was paid by it? Finally, what appears at first glance to be the most serious allegation — that Geller falsely accused Tarazi of perjuring himself about whether he was paid by CAIR — loses most of its steam when you see that Tarazi is accusing Geller of saying that others are reporting that Tarazi perjured himself. Even if that's read as a false assertion of fact by Geller — which is far from certain — Geller can defend it if she can establish a basis for believing that he was, in fact, paid by CAIR. Moreover, if she can establish that he was a public figure, generally or for a limited purpose, she can prevail by showing a lack of malice. The game-plan for defending a case like this is clear, to any reasonable lawyer.

But the lawyers in this case are defending Pamela Geller. There are no clear game-plans. There is only noisy dogma.

Geller's lawyers filed a motion to dismiss. This, by itself, was perfectly sensible. In federal court, as in the vast majority of state courts (where they are often called "demurrers"), a motion to dismiss is the right way to test, early in the case, whether the factual allegations in the complaint are sufficient on their face, even if taken as true, to state a legally valid claim. As any first-semester law student knows, the judge will the facts in the four corners of the complaint along with any judicially noticeable facts (like the fact that December 3, 2010 was a Friday, or the existence of a court pleading), and determine whether, if they are true, they show that the plaintiff has a legal claim. Good lawyers don't pack their motions to dismiss with arguments about facts outside the four corners of the complaint, because they are irrelevant, and almost always serve to antagonize the judge, who doesn't want to deal with that shit.

Geller's lawyers took a different path — the path of using the motion to dismiss as a vehicle for one of Geller's rants about Tarazi, Bary, and Islam. Their motion argues extensively about evidence outside the four corners of Tarazi's complaint and attaches extensive evidence to contest it, including a chatty and self-promoting declaration from Geller. It reads like a press release or a blog post. Geller justifies this heaping helping of extrinsic facts with very weak tea — she argues that she's challenging the court's subject matter jurisdiction under F.R.C.P. 12(b)(1) on the grounds that Tarazi's claims are so bogus that he can't make the $75,000 cutoff for federal diversity jurisdiction. If that sounds like a highly questionable excuse, it's because it is — though courts can consider some extrinsic evidence to consider whether they have jurisdiction, they can't use such a motion as an occasion to resolve the core dispute of the case: “If satisfaction of an essential element of a claim for relief is at issue . . . the jury is the proper trier of contested facts.” (Arbaugh v. Y & H Corp., 546 US 500 (2006).) The judge has already rather dryly remarked that he will not consider Geller's declaration, or the extrinsic evidence, except as "necessary" to resolve jurisdiction, which is very likely a tell.

This will probably sound like dreary law wonkery to our non-lawyer readers. But using a motion to dismiss to embark on such a rant about the true facts of the case is generally a signifier of hackery or craziness, and rubs judges the wrong way. It's the legal equivalent of getting on an elevator and, when a stranger politely and indifferently says "hi, how are you", responding "WELL, I HAVE SOME UNPLEASANT DISCHARGE FROM MY GENITALS THAT I HOPE TO HAVE CLEARED UP TODAY, THANK YOU FOR ASKING!!!" This gives judges migraines.

Perhaps Geller views the motion as an opportunity to "have her day in court" — to achieve attention to her viewpoints that she is not getting through her highly traveled web site or many media appearances. That would be odd thinking. Nobody but lawyers and a very few interested people actually read legal documents, as opposed to news (or blog) reports of legal documents. It's a poor forum not well calculated to draw much attention, like an advertisement in Newsweek. Her lawyers should know better, or should strive to have better control over her. The promotion of punditry makes bad lawyering.

[By the way, I note that all the criticized litigants in this post are conservative pundits. Though I can't think of any liberal examples off of the top of my head, I am deeply skeptical that liberal pundits are any better about this. Perhaps someone can suggest an example.]

An actual quote from Arnold this morning:

"Sometimes you never give up."

Yes, we hate an ungodly high percentage of marketers. But as we've noted before, The Bloggess has much, much more fun hating them than we do.

Democrats are adamant that income taxes on those earning $250,000 or more must increase, and the federal estate tax reinstated, to cure the deficit.

Republicans are adamant that extended federal unemployment benefits must end, unless paid for by other spending cuts, to cure the deficit.

Solution: Compromise.

President Obama and congressional Republicans agreed Monday to a tentative deal that would extend for two years all the Bush-era income tax breaks set to expire on Dec. 31, continue unemployment benefits for an additional 13 months and cut payroll taxes for workers to encourage employers to start hiring.

Of course both decisions are eminently reasonable in the short term.  We're in a depression, albeit one caused largely by the fact we've lived beyond our means since 1971.  Raising taxes in the middle of a depression would be insane.  Cutting off unemployment assistance in the middle of a depression would be cruel.  So we compromise.

But one day, and that day's arrival was accelerated this afternoon, the Chinese will no longer compromise with us by buying our bonds.  And if past, and present, performance is any guide, on that day and in the days following neither of the major parties will do anything to solve what will be our second great depression.  They'll just lay blame, one complaining that the other failed to diagnose the tumor, and the other complaining that the one failed to treat it.  Don't expect either party to do anything until they all twitch at the base of a bullet-riddled wall.

Fortunately, in the words of some Brit who hated America almost as much as the Chinese do, "in the long run we are all dead."

Last month I was lucky enough to once again attend Boardgamegeekcon. My second year was an even better experience. I saw many friends from the year before, never spoiled for people to try new games with, and got to play many of the hot new games. Yeah, it's a pretty good way to spend a few days.

Continue Reading »

Like I keep saying, the writers over at cracked continue to offer insightful political and social satire and commentary disguised by numbered fart-and-boob jokes.

But some things are so freakishly wrong in the first place that they can't really be satirized; even the best writers are left sitting back and gaping in horror, making a few half-hearted jabs.

Take, for instance, Cracked's take on the E! Channel reality show Bridalplasty, in which brides-to-be compete for free plastic surgery.

I thought, at first, that Cracked was having us on — that it was describing a fictional, over-the-top show in order to satirize reality TV.

Oh Lord, how I wish that were true. Because the show is real — and, if anything, worse than Cracked's heroic but futile attempts to ridicule it would suggest. E! thinks people want to watch this sort of shit. And they're right.

What the hell is wrong with us?

WASHINGTON, D.C. Janet Napolitano, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, held a press conference today to announce a new program designed to make kids and their parents more comfortable with the TSA's new enhanced pat-down procedures.

"Domestic extremists have been trying to portray TSA agents as ogres," said Napolitano. "Our 'Cool Strangers With Candy' campaign will help our children see TSA workers for what they are: friendly, funny, cool strangers who will give kids great candy in exchange for touching their breasts, buttocks, and genitals."

The TSA's approach to enhanced pat-downs of kids has come under fire recently after TSA Regional Security Director James Marchand described the TSA's method of encouraging children to comply with being touched in their private regions by government officials. "You try to make it as best you can for that child to come through. If you can come up with some kind of a game to play with a child, it makes it a lot easier," said Marchand, who said that the "being touched is a game" program is now part of TSA training.

Stung by criticism that this "game" approach makes children more vulnerable to abuse, Napolitano and other TSA officials vowed to use all of the good judgment and scientific expertise of the the Department of Homeland Security to come up with a new program.

"We used the same scientific know-how we previously employed in the behavior detection program and in employing body scanners," Napolitano said. "'Cool Strangers With Candy' was the result."

The TSA is planning aggressive advertising to promote the "Cool Strangers With Candy" Program, including internet, television, radio, and magazine campaigns, as well as community relations vans.

A TSA Community Relations Van on patrol.

Napolitano also announced that the TSA was accelerating hiring of employees interested in working in the new child-related programs. "We've accepted many applications from people with lots of experience working with children," Napolitano confided. "They've found themselves on the job market because of the economy, or for various reasons that we can't ask about because of federal privacy laws or TSA Policy." The TSA is advertising for new suitable employees at anime conventions, camera stores, and parks.

But the TSA is not relying on the "Cool Strangers With Candy" program alone. Napolitano previewed a number of other programs calculated to make children more comfortable with TSA measures, including "We Can Make You a Star!", a program to encourage children to comply with the TSA's Rapiscan machines. "We're going to show children that it's perfectly natural, healthy and beautiful for awkward, overweight middle-aged men to use high-tech equipment to take naked pictures of them," said Napolitano. The TSA is reportedly negotiating with Miley Cyrus to be the program's spokesperson.

Napolitano is also working with TSA security experts to find ways to prevent parents and children from slowing down the security process with complaints, questions, or hysterical screaming. "If you have kids, you know that most of their complaints are just about getting attention from their parents," said Napolitano. "That's why we're working on a policy requiring kids to be patted down outside the presence of their parents. Then we can hit them with our new kid-friendly slogans 'This is Our Little Secret' and 'Do This Or Scary Men Will Kill Your Parents.'"

Asked whether parents across America might view these programs as intrusions into their relationship with their children, Napolitano smiled broadly. "No, no. Not in America. If there's one thing you can count on about Americans — whether they're liberals or conservatives — it's that they understand that the government knows what's best for their kids. And now TSA agents have a shot at using their few special minutes with kids to teach them what it means to be a good American: unquestioning compliance."