I was pleased with Wally’s column (Courier-Herald, Jan. 12) where he encourages people to forgo traveling by air.

I’ve committed not to fly by air also until such time that the government stops its illegal and unconstitutional searches.

It seems to me that if the airlines determine they need to make our travel safe, and doing such searches, then that would be their business, not the government’s, just as the people handling the promotion of rock bands pat down people wanting to hear Rush and other such performing groups.

Our representatives and the president have taken oaths to uphold the Constitution, but continue to make laws which do the opposite apparently in the name of making this a risk-free society, which, if I recall, is not part of the Constitution, nor the business of the government. Every time we ask the government to intervene in something to make it more risk free, it costs us dearly both in the implementation of the regulation and the freedom we might have otherwise enjoyed, e.g., seat belts make us safer sometimes, but wouldn’t driving more carefully do the same without the expense?

My adult children are doing fine without having had back seat car seats as babies; in fact we used the hook over the front seat car seat…however, I now shudder when riding with my daughter who is distracted and turning in her seat while driving at speeds of 60 mph to reach back and find a dropped bottle for the child in the back seat, instead of asking me to look for it, something she does when I’m not there.

What is supposed to be safer, isn’t. Traveling by air isn’t much safer either because air traffic and controllers don’t always see what’s going on and the government is too busy worrying about terrorists instead of replacing the outmoded equipment being used to manage the traffic, or inspecting the planes themselves.

Paul T. Jackson

Enumclaw