Open Letter to Senators Wyden & Dorgan

Dear Senators:

With reference to the ban you sponsored and which passed Congress and became law, banning cigarette lighters and matches on airliners in the USA, I would like to say one thing; you're a pair of prize idiots. Why don't you rearrange the deck chairs on the food courts of the airports while you're at it? This has nothing to do with security, this is harrassment of smokers and getting your name in front of voters by managing to LOOK like you're actually doing something. And I'm not even a smoker.

If Richard Reid had placed his destructive device in his underwear instead of his shoes, would you now be banning Fruit-of-the-Looms on domestic airline flights? I think not. This is not about terrorism or security, this is just you being fools.

By passing a law which the TSA admits it does not know how it can enforce, what you do is make 'status criminals' out of the 25% of the adult population in the USA who smoke and who will now 'sneak' matches onto planes so that they can light up when they get to their destinations. When you create status criminals by encouraging such behavior, you tear down the culture of law-abiding citizens - it becomes foolish to COMPLY with the law instead of foolish to NOT comply. You do our nation a great disservice in this manner - it's worse than the equallly ill-advised and totally ignored national 55mph speed limit of decades past.

You're a pair of lunatics and you're both completely out of touch with reality. Do the citizens of your respective home states know how stupid the pair of you are? Roughly 25% of the adult population of your respective states are smokers - that's 25% of the population who won't be voting for YOU anymore.

Warmest Regards,

Wigwam Jones, famous country-music songwriter