His Daughter's On The No Fly List

Chris Kelly, a writer for HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher," writes in the Huffington Post:
My middle daughter's name seems to be on the No Fly List. Since she's only twelve years old, and neither practices nor endorses acts of political violence, I can only assume there's been some kind of mistake.

No one at the airport will tell us how she made the list. They won't even confirm that she's on it. Every time we go to the airport, the electronic kiosk simply refuses to issue her a boarding pass, and we're sent to the ticket counter, where five people look at the whole family's I.D., and then specifically hers, and then someone calls someone, and they call someone, and that person tells the person on the phone, "No, she's a little girl." And eventually we're allowed to run for our flight.

Which beats explosive decompression, I guess. But it's still a drag.

It also kind of feels like a waste of our time, the airline's time, the TSA's time, and the time of whoever's on the other end of the phone, who could be torturing someone.

So I should hate the No Fly List. Besides the personal inconvenience, it runs counter to a solid third of the Bill of Rights. But I'm conflicted. Because I have a pretty good idea why my daughter's on the list. It's because she has the same name as this guy:

In 1993 this IRA thug walked into a fish shop in Belfast with a bomb that went off prematurely (of course) injuring 57 people, including a 79-year-old woman and two two-year-old boys. It also killed ten people, including a thirteen-year-old girl named Leanne Baird, and her little sister, Michelle, seven. Just like Jesus would have wanted.

But I have some disappointing news for Mike Gallagher: The killer's name isn't Abdul or Ahmed or Mohammed. It's Sean Kelly.

Which is why America has to wake up, get serious about terrorism, and racially profile all Irish Catholics. Because you never know where they'll strike next with their religion of hate. Wait, that can't be right.
The whole piece is here.

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