Beheaded on a Bus -- Can You Imagine?!? What Civil Rights Will We Lose Now?

There are some strange people in the world who do some inexplicable things. And with the instant blast of electronic media, we hear about them whether we want to or not.

The latest of these incidents occurred last week when a man was sleeping in his seat on a Greyhound bus in Canada and some deranged sicko (is that redundant?) sat next to him and at some point just turned to the guy, a stranger to him, stabbed him over and over and -- unbelievably -- actually beheaded the guy. On the bus!! Holy cow.

How incredibly traumatic that must have been for the other passengers on the bus (not to mention the victim, who hopefully was already dead before the beheading started). You just can't imagine that something like that could happen on a Greyhound bus, for God's sake.

Greyhound has pulled the ads they were running in Canada touting the calm comforts of bus riding. The theme was "There's a reason you've never heard of 'Bus Rage.'"

The campaign was already over before the attack, though a few straggling outdoor billboards in high traffic areas hadn't yet been pulled down.

I feel bad for Greyhound. When there's an airplane crash or incident, the airline always gets the black eye, and often they deserve it. Well, sometimes, at least. But in this case, the bus company didn't do anything wrong. Nevertheless, you know this will hurt them. (Can you imagine unknowingly sitting in that [replaced] seat on that bus? Would you feel the vibes? Gives me the willies!)

Let's see -- when one terrorist wannabe put a knife in his shoe before boarding a plane, suddenly we all have to take off our shoes forever more when going through airport security. When one other nut boarded a plane with some liquids that could have been blended to create an explosion, suddenly we all can't take any liquids or gels (or even mascara, for cryin' out loud) over 3 oz. on a plane unless we buy it at the airport after going through security.

So far we all can board trains and buses without being X-rayed or strip-searched. What should happen after one guy goes crazy on one bus? Should we all now have to turn our pockets and luggage inside out before boarding? Should they buy expensive screening equipment and hire thousands of people to run it all and turn a 5-minute boarding process into a two-hour endurance contest? Will "officials" thus overreact as they usually do, edging us even more toward becoming a police state?

Fortunately, this wasn't a terrorist incident, just the actions of one sick bastard. So probably we'll all retain our civil rights on buses, at least, for awhile longer. At least I hope so.