SHOULD WE BE IMITATING TERRORIST LABOR PRACTICES? Yesterday the Senate voted 51-46 to give 40,000 airport baggage screeners the right to unionize. The House supports a similar bill, but President Bush has threatened a veto, which there doesn�t appear to be enough votes in either the House or Senate to override. The New York Times reports that Sen. Richard M. Burr (R-NC), called the bill �absolutely absurd. Terrorists don�t go on strike. Terrorists don�t call their union to negotiate before they attack.�

It�s nice to know that some Senators look to al-Qaeda to model fair labor practices. Personally, I�d like to think the people who prevent weapons from making it onto airplanes are content at work. There�s been high turnover among screeners, and a union could help provide the stability necessary to professionalize the job, keeping us all safer.

—Dana Goldstein

Dana Goldstein, a former associate editor and writer at the Prospect, comes from a family of public-school educators. She received the Spencer Fellowship in Education Journalism, a Schwarz Fellowship at the New America Foundation, and a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellowship at the Nation Institute. Her journalism is regularly featured in Slate, The Atlantic, The Nation, The Daily Beast, and other publications, and she is a staff writer at the Marshall Project.