We need more explosives sniffing dogs at our airports. I am not joking. The alternative would be to fund companies developing chemosensors or biosensors. Dogs can serve a dual role: detecting bombs and providing pet therapy to calm nervous pax.
(The can of club soda that brought down the Russian plane in Egypt could have been easily discovered by such a dog. Sad.)
Let’s move dogs sniffing out marijuana and put them on bomb sniffing duty.
I think anyone flying on Southwest in the coming weeks should board the plane with a white pastry box in protest.
We have one Associated Press story, repeated on The Philly Inquirer, the Chicago Tribune and Fox News. Various news outlets repeating the same AP story, based on the account of one person, don’t make the story more true. I’m just saying, we’ve been burned before.
But pass that baklava over here. Yum, baklava.
^great idea. I’ll bring half moons to my mom.
Dogs are amazing. The beagle that detected traces of Swedish apples (that were eaten on the plane) in my bag was sooooo cute!! Much, much more calming than a (theoretical sutuation) stone-faced TSA dude sticking some sensor into my bag. 
CF, I would think if it didn’t happen that way Southwest would have said so in their statement.
Unfortunately, I think most working dogs with enough drive to do the job are not likely to be low key enough to calm anyone down. 
[/quote]
Sorry. I’m not as confident about dogs catching stuff, based on the number of times I discovered AFTER I passed US immigration in the airport, a contraband orange or proscuitto sandwich I had inadvertently left in my bag.
But I don’t think its the orange or prosiutto that the dogs are trained for or looking for.
@GMTplus7 Are you sure the proscuitto was “accidental”?
Things have really gone beyond the pale now. A congresswoman from Missouri said that in opposing the new refuge law, which essentially stops all immigration from Syria, the President was “standing up for ISIS”. This level of dishonest and despicable mischaracterization makes all rational discussion just impossible. I’m beginning to think we’ve finally addressed Benjamin Franklin’s famous comment, and he would not be proud.
Consolation, I’ll take a dog over a TSA dude any time. The majority of these dogs look like ordinary mutts. They sniff the bags, and if they get a whiff of “the stuff”, they sit down next to the bag. If you are a bad guy, that would freak you out. If you have a cookie in your bag, you’d laugh and say how cute.
GMT, it just proves my point - we don’t have enough such dogs. 
Enjoy your prosciutto smuggling while it lasts.
“I’ll take a dog over a TSA dude any time.” @BunsenBurner, remember that NBC News test, in which the TSA missed 95% of the weapons NBC put through security? It’s hard for me to believe that dogs could do any worse!
http://news.yahoo.com/brussels-metro-closed-due-terror-alert-network-074450730.html
"Brussels (AFP) - Brussels was on terror lockdown Saturday in fear of a Paris-style attack, with a gunman wanted over the deadly rampage in the French capital a week ago still on the run.
The Belgian capital closed its metro system and shuttered shops and public buildings as a terror alert was raised to its highest level over reports of an “imminent threat” of a gun and bomb attack similar to the horror seen in Paris."
The result of years of immigration from societies where violence is common - the same infrastructure gets built in our backyards too. Compare how Brussels used to be versus now, and decide if this is how we want our cities to end up as.
Belgium and France have lower intentional homicide rates than the US.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate
Even including the recent mass murders in France, the US intentional homicide rate is probably more than twice that of France. I.e. the US is plenty violent all by itself when compared internationally, despite the great decline in crime over the past two decades (crime was much worse two decades ago, despite “years of immigration” since then).
Plus, dogs don’t ogle naked images on the full-body scanner or go on strike for fatter pensions.
I read recently that Brussels has six different mayors! Hard to get things done with those age old divisions between the French speaking people and the Dutch speaking people with different administrations and law enforcement agencies, and no one cooperating with each other. I hope they get their act together.
“Several people hid in our dressing room and the killers were able to get in and killed every one of them, except for a kid who was hiding under my leather jacket,” Hughes told Vice founder Shane Smith in a clip released by the site on Saturday.
I’m still trying to work out the logic here. If the terrorists know that the city is on lockdown on Saturday, then wouldn’t they just postpone their attack until Sunday?
[Quote]
We removed that Saddam guy. In case you didn’t notice, he had really unpleasant habits.
[/Quote ]
And things are so much better for the Iraqi people now, eh?
Some of the lockdown/state of emergency is due to legitimate concerns. Part of declaring a state of emergency gives police/govt the ability to do searches, raids etc. that might not be within the framework of the constitution.