If you've been wondering why Congress has been playing catch and release with bad apples at the TSA, maybe this explains a few things. Aviation Week reports that some are "More Equal Than Others." This refers to the new, $70-million dollar luxury jets that Congressional delegates will get to use — beginning today and at taxpayer expense — when flying around the world.

Will the Red Team and other undercover agents posing as suicide bombers be allowed to try and sneak bomb parts onto these aircraft? And if they succeed, will Congress then care how the little guy travels?

This scenario smells a bit like July 2001, when it was first reported that then Attorney General John Ashcroft had started flying around America on privately chartered government jets, some of which cost the taxpayer more than $1,600 an hour to fly. More importantly, Ashcroft's luxury jets were certified terrorist-free.

But back to Congress' terrorist-free Boeings of today:  

"With exquisite timing, Boeing chooses a travel weekend that could go down in the annals of airborne horror to deliver a top-of-the-line Boeing Business Jet that will be assigned to Congress - those folks who have charged billions in air travel taxes over the decades and left us with 1930s blind-landing technology. The jet took off from Seattle this morning for its base at Scott AFB in Illinois.

The C-40C, jam-packed with 40 seats by luxury-jet specialists at Greenpoint Technologies, is the third and last of a batch ordered in 2005. They will be operated by the USAF reserve to carry Congressional delegations around the world.

Funny how nobody in Washington ever mentions these $70 million jets as an example of wasteful defense spending. Or as an example of an unjustified Air Force mission that doesn't support our soldiers on the ground."

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