Mission Accomplished In Queens

Continuing today's inebriated theme: If a neighbor's account is accurate, authorities responded to one man's solution to a bad day at the airborne office -- cursing a boorish passenger over the PA system, then submitting a resignation in the form of a zip down the emergency chute (but not before grabbing a brew from the galley) -- by sending hundreds of local, state and federal officers, a SWAT team and a helicopter to apprehend the fugitive flight attendant . . . at his mother's house in Queens.

Could two or three of those law enforcement personnel have been excused to, say, chase Osama bin Laden without jeopardizing the mission? From another perspective: If it genuinely required hundreds of men to track down and take in Steven Slater, shouldn't we send him to the Pakistani-Afghan border region with a pistol, a bag of jerky and a photo of bin Laden?

Let's hope whichever brand of beer he grabbed is already scripting the commercial.