On the way out of Logan’s terminal A this week, I saw two signs immediately adjacent. The first said that due to an elevated security condition of ORANGE, no liquids could be brought through security or onto a plane. The second said that liquids could be brought through in a single one quart bag containing three-ounce containers. Between them was a scowling TSA officer, periodically and loudly instructing passengers to read all signs regarding transport of liquids, firearms, and similar dangerous devices.

He didn’t seem to want his picture taken, so I do not have one to show you. But surely this is an experiment in how miserable citizens can be made. They can’t accidentally have two signs like that up one next to another. And the local TSA chief can’t do something that twistedly awful on his own authority. The directive to do so must have come down from the central TSA bureaucracy, perhaps at the level of unified DHS.