US-VISIT

I suppose I'd heard about this new initiative, dubbed US-VISIT, whereby foreigners traveling to the United States need to be fingerprinted and photographed upon entry, but I hadn't really grasped the reality of it until I saw it in action at Dulles Airport earlier this afternoon. There's so much that's crazy about airport security these days that I suppose the whole thing must be beyond rational discussion, but this really seems like a terrible policy that's likely to have a very adverse affect on our tourism and also on visitors' impression of the country. And of course at some point I assume more countries will start retaliating with policies designed to hassle Americans.

It's not the biggest deal in the world, but it seems to me to typify the thoughtless and paranoid manner in which we've been making a lot of decisions for the past six years.