This Is War!

Idaho Senator Larry Craig may have been largely abandoned by his party in the wake of the recent scandal involving alleged lewd conduct by the senior legislator in an airport men's room. One group, however, has rallied to his defense. The American Land Rights Association is threatening to boycott the Minneapolis airport in which Craig was arrested. What's the connection? According to the organization's press release:

By ambushing Senator Larry Craig, the Minneapolis St Paul Airport Police have effectively declared war on the West. They are primarily responsible for greatly weakening private property rights and Federal land use advocates in the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and in Congress.

"More power to the association," writes John Nichols in The Nation. "Senators who are as unreconstructed in their willingness to pave paradise as Larry Craig are not easy to come by, so special-interest groups can't have them getting ambushed by airport security schemes."

Whatever you may think about the case against Craig (and, really, who cares?), it's hard to imagine that the airport security (in Minneapolis, no less) harbors some secret vendetta against "the West." But then paranoid delusions have never been my strong suit.