On Nathaniel Heatwole and airline security

Nathaniel Heatwole certainly could have used better judgment in his effort to alert Transportation Security Administration officials to glaring holes in airline security. But he hardly deserves prison for smuggling box cutters and other possible weapons onto aircraft and telling the Transportation Security Administration via email that he'd done it.

TSA bureaucrats and federal prosecutors instead are treating the case as though Heatwole actually had sought to harm airline passengers.

Prosecutors should keep in mind that Heatwole is the air travel equivalent of the canary in a coal mine. By exposing security breaches, he may well have saved lives. That's hardly an offense that should yield the 10 years in prison threatened by embarrassed bureaucrats.

-- The Tribune Chronicle, Warren, Ohio