Last week the media were all agog are about the exploits of a 61-year old postal worker Doug Hughes, who piloted his gyrocopter below the radar and landed near the White House and the Capitol building to deliver letters to each member of Congress protesting the state of campaign finance in the US, a worthy cause indeed since that is a scandal. You can read the letter here. It is a pretty good analysis of the problem.

Given the insane levels of fear and hysteria in this country over terrorist attacks, this was undoubtedly a dangerous thing to do even though it turns out that Hughes had alerted authorities of his intentions. And yet congressman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) seems disappointed that Hughes was not “blown out of the air”, rather than relieved that a tragedy was averted.

The Daily Show had a pretty informative segment on this, asking the question as to why, given the intensive domestic spying that the government does on everyone, Hughes’s publicly announced plans went unnoticed.

(This clip aired on April 21, 2015. To get suggestions on how to view clips of The Daily Show and The Nightly Show outside the US, please see this earlier post. If the videos autoplay, please see here for a diagnosis and possible solutions.)