Would you like peanuts or a soft pillow?

I was up late last night when this story broke. Of course, in today's "report it now and ask questions later" environment, the story originally read "terrorist tries to light shoe bomb on Denver airplane". Well, let's give them credit that there was an airplane involved and it was headed to Denver. Those facts are close enough, right?

Once they received more information, CNN revealed that this person was a diplomat from Qatar and that he was actually smoking on the plane. They reported that when confronted, the man made a remark about a shoe bomb and the passengers responded. The topic of "diplomatic immunity" came up. Apparently, international diplomats cannot be charged with a crime in the U.S., although it can be revoked.

I was shocked when I woke up to hear that they decided not to charge this guy with a crime. The story, which had been "breaking terrorism news" at midnight had been brushed under the rug so quickly in 8 hours that it was buried on cnn.com's website (Tiger's return to Augusta, of course, was the featured article). The story evolved even more to say that he was "possibly" smoking on the plane. I was also appalled at the Embassy's reaction to the incident. In his statement, the ambassador didn't even come close to an apology. His statement was basically "Yep, he's cool. Don't worry about it - he works for me and I say he's fine." He even criticized the response and warned against "reckless judgements or speculation".

Today I expected interviews with some of the passengers, a debate on "diplomatic immunity" and a discussion on the response from Qatar. What I got was a poll on the new Tiger Woods Nike ad and a countdown until he teed off.