I wasted time on xmas arguing with our hostess over the new, Chertoff-enriching cancer boxes at the airports (a k a “police states with shopping,” as Andrew Sullivan has dubbed them). But Champagne had clearly sapped my wits or I would have cited the latest terror scare to sober her up: salad bars, targeted with ricin (or something). And that was a story that came and went faster than you can say anthrax. A country in which probably the bulk of the population has never even tasted airline food will cede all rights for fear of a Muslin on a plane but keeps right on chewing no matter what’s in the trough. Nothing gets between Americans and their all-you-can-eat.