Could the Department of Homeland Security please stop insulting our intelligence by continuing to hold the "threat level" at orange? The implication is that it is unusually elevated, nearly panic time (red). But if it has been there since 2003 or so, as I hear on the intercom every time I enter an airport, it is now the new baseline.

We will never again keep our shoes on, carry on liquids or Swiss Army knives, walk through drinking coffee, and so on. Those new policies will outlast all of us. Even though some major Al Qaeda players are laying low, or dead, and even though we have been keeping suitcases explosive-free for decades, and even though cockpit doors are secure and everyone is watching for swarthy men with boxcutters to congregate in the aisles at the front, we have to act as if beturbaned evildoers are just waiting for the slightest failure of vigilance.

But that lowering of inspection standards is not ever going to happen, anyway. So what is the information carried in the annoying color code? It sounds like an airport novel. Hmmm.