“The South Korean military went to ‘crisis status’ on Tuesday and threatened military strikes after the North fired dozens of shells at a South Korean island, killing two of the South’s soldiers and setting off an exchange of fire in one of the most serious clashes between the two sides in decades.” [NYT]

While our fearless Stinque leader Nojo (who admits he seldom flies) says he can’t get excited about the electronic strip searches and probing pat downs conducted by TSA at airports, I am incredibly riled up about this blatant violation of 4th Amendment rights by our government.  And believe me, I’m someone who thinks about the 4th Amendment quite a bit.

As the worst day for travel approaches next week (Hi Mom! This Wednesday is why I never visit you at Thanksgiving!), more non-traveling regular US ‘Merikans and not just us frequent flyers are getting to experience the double bind of choosing between radiation exposure/virtual strip search, or a highly invasive pat-down.

So people are rightfully pissed off that House Speaker-Elect John Boehner (R-Fake Tan) was able to avoid the nekkid body scanner and the pat-down; and in fact he managed to avoid all security at Washington’s National Airport.  No doubt — no doubt — he has a lifetime’s worth of radiation exposure from the tanning bed.

Meanwhile, I decided to follow the money. Guess who’s making money off of this airport performance art?

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Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association can’t let a good deed go unpunished:

We have feminized the Medal of Honor.

According to Bill McGurn of the Wall Street Journal, every Medal of Honor awarded during these two conflicts has been awarded for saving life. Not one has been awarded for inflicting casualties on the enemy. Not one…

So the question is this: when are we going to start awarding the Medal of Honor once again for soldiers who kill people and break things so our families can sleep safely at night?

If only our soldiers behaved more like — well, more like Jesus:

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U.S. District Judge Virginia Phillips keeps the DADT injunction: “The public has an interest in military readiness, unit cohesion, and the preservation of fundamental constitutional rights. While Defendants’ interests in [preserving] the status quo and enforcing its laws are important, these interests are outweighed by the compelling public interest of safeguarding fundamental constitutional rights.” [ThinkProgress]

Given the kerfuffle over the Florida preacher with the Yosemite Sam mustache who even Fred Phelps thinks is koo-koo pants, you may have missed this latest story guaranteed to inspire more fury directed at the US and its troops:

US soldiers ‘killed Afghan civilians for sport and collected fingers as trophies’

Five Army soldiers have been charged with the murder of three Afghan civilians, and seven more have been charged with covering up the murders and assaulting another soldier who attempted to report the murders to superior officers.

According to the allegations, after murdering the civilians, the soldiers cut off the fingers of the corpses as souvenirs, at least one of them allegedly kept a skull of one of the corpses, in shades of Abu Gharib they posed for pictures with the dead bodies, and then they stole and smoke the hashish that at least one civilian had with him.

The soldiers were part of a brigade stationed in Kandahar in 2009 through the spring of 2010.

But there’s more to the story.

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Memo from the AP standards editor: “To begin with, combat in Iraq is not over, and we should not uncritically repeat suggestions that it is, even if they come from senior officials.” [Romenesko]

Oh, and let’s call this a Mission Accomplished Again Open Thread while we’re here.