Column

My working theory — you could call it a philosophy, or a freestanding reason of how the world works—is what I call the Theory of Relative Laziness. It goes like this: Never attribute anything to conspiracy, coordination or planning when laziness could explain it. Call it Occam’s Armchair.

The Transportation Security Administration announced this week that it was delaying a plan to allow passengers to carry pocketknives, hockey sticks and golf clubs aboard airplanes. With terrorism prominently in the news — and opposition surging from flight attendants and others in the airline industry — this decision was perhaps inevitable. It’s also wrongheaded.

There are at least 7,518 reasons to get the U.S.-Mexican border under control. That equals the number of aliens apprehended in fiscal year 2011 from the four nations that federal officials label “state sponsors of terrorism” plus 10 “countries of interest.” 

Besides aliens with eyes in the back of their heads, a possible interracial baby mix-up at the maternity ward and “Bet he’ll laugh if I say ‘shoehorn’,” one of my most indelible memories of “The Dick Van Dyke Show” has proven strangely prophetic.

WASHINGTON — Ordinary people, elected and unelected, behaved heroically last week. Unfortunately, it all happened hundreds of miles from Washington.

In Boston, strangers gave clothes and shelter to shivering runners. They comforted injured spectators. They saved lives and limbs. In New York, there wasn’t as much to do, so they sang “Sweet Caroline” at Yankee Stadium. Meanwhile, the people we love to hate — elected officials and government bureaucrats — performed admirably and collaboratively, sharing power and camera time.

WASHINGTON — Charles and David Koch are reportedly considering buying the Tribune Company (owners of the L.A. Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Baltimore Sun, and others) prompting a great Garance Franke-Ruta piece in the Atlantic on why big city newspapers’ editorial staffs invariably lean left.

Across-the-board federal spending cuts — “sequestration” — have started to impinge on air transportation. Furloughs to Federal Aviation Administration air-traffic controllers, which the Obama administration says are legally unavoidable, began Sunday, causing flight delays. On Monday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., announced that the relatively modest impact so far is just the “first taste of the pain of sequestration.”