The following is an excerpt from OpinionJournal.com’s “Best of the Web” written by the editor, James Taranto.
Free Haisong Jiang!
“Cops have caught the notorious kissing bandit who caused a major security scare at Newark Airport [a week ago] Sunday when he strolled through a checkpoint the wrong way to give his girlfriend a smooch goodbye,” the New York Post reports:
Haisong Jiang, a 28-year-old Rutgers bio-medical research grad student, brought the busy airport to a standstill and sparked a weeklong manhunt, sources said. . . .
His roommate, a fellow Rutgers student who identified himself as Hui, 29, said that Jiang was at the gym when cops arrived. He then came home and turned himself in.
“He said, ‘Maybe it’s because of the other day.’ ” Hui told The Post. “Yeah, he did something inappropriate. He didn’t think it’s a big deal, so he didn’t mention it.”
The New York Times reports that Jiang is charged with a “petty disorderly persons offense,” carrying a maximum penalty of 30 days in jail. New Jersey’s senior senator isn’t happy:
In an interview on Saturday, Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg, of New Jersey, said he was hoping that the United States attorney’s office would consider bringing federal charges because the penalty Mr. Jiang is facing, “is hardly noteworthy and would not discourage people who want to break through the perimeter.”
The senator said the trouble the security breach caused far outweighed the punishment: 1,600 people stuck in the airport for six hours; flights delayed and an “incalculable” loss of money. And then for five days after the incident, New Jersey law enforcement officials searched exhaustively for the man caught on a grainy surveillance video, one which Sen. Lautenberg had released on Thursday.
The video showed that Mr. Jiang was able to step past security last Sunday when a guard, identified by a law enforcement official as Ruben Hernandez, left his post. The guard has been on administrative leave since Tuesday, and he faces disciplinary action, according to the Transportation Security Administration.
Without Mr. Hernandez watching, Mr. Jiang was able to slip into an area of people who had already cleared security and embraced a woman in a puffy coat and kissed her. When security officials were alerted that someone had breached a secure area, they took steps to lock down the terminal.
We agree with Lautenberg that this is a serious matter calling for serious punishment to set an example. But the guy who should be made an example of is Ruben Hernandez–who should have known better–not Haisong Jiang. If Lautenberg is serious, he will hold hearings to investigate the union that regards someone who leaves his post and causes a major security breach as a “model employee.”
For more “Best of the Web” click here and look for the “Best of the Web Today” link in the middle column below “Today’s Columnists.
