BECAUSE THEY HAVEN’T DONE ENOUGH TO MAKE TRAVEL UNAPPEALING: Feds now arrest your laptops at border:

Not content with taking your shoes and confiscating your water, now the Department of Homeland Security is gunning for your laptops.

As the Washington Post reported yesterday, Border Patrol and Customs agents can now “detain” laptops “for a reasonable period of time” to “review and analyze information.”

They don’t need probable cause under the new policy. Doesn’t matter if you’re a U.S. citizen or foreign visitor. Officials can hold the laptops indefinitely. Or hard drives, flash drives, cellphones, iPods, pagers, beepers, video and audio tapes. Ditto papers, documents, books, pamphlets, even litter.

The litter they can have. But screw with my laptop and you’ll regret it.

UPDATE: Reader Michael Smith questions the timing:

This laptop story is old news.

There could be no *possible* reason why it should come out now, as a big revelation, just when Obama’s lead in the polls is basically non-existent?

I predict no improvement in this department regardless of who’s elected in November.