Cool Gift of the Day
Thursday, May 18, 2006
What it is:
A copy of the Bill of Rights printed in portable, metal form.
Why we love it:
Even those of us in the happy world of gift giving have noticed that people tend to be getting just a bit grumpy about the curtailing of their rights. Beyond grumpy, some of them are getting downright seditious, and we also can't help but notice that a tendency to loudly and vociferously complain about rights being stripped away often correlates to how often a person has to fly the slightly less than friendly skies. There's something about standing in line with your shoes in your hand, desperately trying to dig the metal out of your dental fillings before you're subjected to a strip search that makes a person, shall we say, exceptionally aware of the way the government impinges on their rights. Your frustrated frequent flying friends may enjoy a bit of mild (and law-abiding) rebellion in the form of this "security edition" Bill of Rights. The first ten amendments to the constitution are printed on a pocket-sized sheet of sturdy metal that will, no doubt, kick off the metal detectors at the airport. Now, thousands of grumpy fliers can literally (as well as figuratively) dump their rights in a plastic bin as they walk through airport security. You can even buy them in packs of three or five, in case your civil liberties minded friend wants to leave a few copies with the nice folks at the Transportation Security Agency on their way through the checkpoint.