Even if I weren’t a conservative, today’s NYC low-flying plane fiasco would remind me of all of government’s flaws – something unnecessary (a photo op) executed incompetently (no one informed the public) with an unbelievably blind eye to obvious issues (potential panic from a low-flying jetliner, trailed by an F-16, flying over lower Manhattan). Now all I need to hear is that the exercise went over budget.

UPDATE: The White House Military Office director has offered an apology.

ANOTHER UPDATE: The voices on this Wall Street Journal thread are furious. One notes, “they can photoshop Godzilla into Times Square, but they needed to fly an airliner low above lower Manhattan for a photo op?” The conspiracy-minded are saying that the “photo op” explanation is so astronomically lame, that it has to be part of a cover-up, that this was an averted terror attack of some kind. That’s supremely implausible — particularly if the NYPD was notified days ahead of time — but that doesn’t mean the explanation wasn’t astonishingly lame.

The fact that this was done in the opening hours of a weekday, instead of on a weekend, is even more baffling.

UPDATE: As the videos flow in, with eerie and disturbing echoes of 9/11, it becomes clearer and clearer that the individual in government most responsible for not informing the public should resign for this.