Here's What You Get

For trying to be wise and play by their rules:

Lee Cooper of Solomons had done the smart thing and signed up for e-alerts about flight delays. So, thanks to a United Airlines e-mail, he knew that his 7:25 p.m. flight from Knoxville to Dulles was delayed until 9:40 because of air traffic control backups. That should have saved him more than two hours of waiting around at the airport.

He did two more smart things: He printed his boarding pass and went to www.tsa.gov to check the average wait times at security checkpoints between 8 and 9 p.m. His diligence, however, was unraveled by the Transportation Security Administration, which closed the security checkpoints at 7:30 p.m. The result? Cooper ended up on the wrong side of security and had to wait until the next day to depart.

I've been in airports where the newsstands and bars are closed, but who closes security? These are clowns we're using to look for the next Richard Reid?