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The U.S. routinely drops 500-pound or 1,000-pound bombs from actual fighter jets; this plot — even if it were carried out by someone other than a hapless loner with no experience and it worked perfectly — could not remotely “blow up” the Pentagon or the Capitol.

I’m sure there is a good explanation for the NYT’s exaggerated framing. Perhaps the FBI told Ferdaus that the Pentagon and Capitol buildings are actually made of papier-mâché, so that a cherry bomb in an RC airplane would be sufficient to blow ‘em up, as the paper of record imagines.

In our next episode, FBI agents will tell some Muslim kid that they have given him superpowers: if he blinks it will kill all infidels everywhere. Our brave federal protectors will thwart the dastardly plot by not actually giving him superpowers. When the dark-hearted lad finally closes his eyes, newspapers will provide a credulous, breathless account of his obvious malice, and police will finally gain the right to search anyone who blinks.

“I know people are trying to make it a freedom of speech issue,” Fairow said “but I had to look at it this way: would I want my wife or daughter to get kicked (onto BART tracks) in a protest that we could have avoided? Safety is our number one concern.”

Sure, why not spice up your authoritarian fear mongering with a dash of women in peril?

Fairow’s justification would apply equally to any public assembly, in or out of his “paid area”. If you start letting government owned authorities do whatever they want in the name of safety as they perceive it, it really is game over.