Methinks Representative King is a wee bit in over his head. I am filled with dread and sorrow at another lost opportunity. Doesn’t King know he is going to be smeared and defamed for these hearings no matter what? So why not achieve something? Why not have the courage of your convictions?

The roots of the split can be found in this Politico article that reported King will not call as witnesses Steven Emerson of the Investigative Project on Terrorism and Robert Spencer of the David Horowitz Freedom Center. That report prompted an angry response from Emerson, who accused King of selling him out. King maintained that he planned to use Emerson as a behind-the-scenes resource.

(Emerson, by the way, was recently the subject of a Tennessee newspaper expose on the dubious tax structure of his organizations after he campaigned against a mosque outside Nashville.)

Now, Spencer has used his Jihad Watch® column in Human Events to pile on King. Titled “King’s hearings on Muslim radicalization: Useless,” the piece blisters:

 Again: what has happened to Peter King?

These hearings are shaping up to be a waste, and worse than a waste. King is apparently rattled by the full-court press of Islamic victimhood rhetoric from Islamic supremacist spokesmen and pressure groups, and is allowing them to set his agenda. By excluding Emerson, he is acquiescing in their Alinskyite marginalization of him and other antijihadists who have nothing to apologize for or be embarrassed about in their work to expose and resist the advance of the global jihad and Islamic supremacism, but who are targeted in ongoing Islamic supremacist defamation campaigns designed to discredit and sideline them (including myself).

So the question becomes, who in Congress will hold legitimate hearings on Muslim radicalization? I nominate Sue Myrick.

Fun-making aside, I was struck by this story, because, well, how the hell was she supposed to know? Most people know you’re not supposed to bring fresh produce or meat across borders, but a particular kind of candy bar?

Curious to see what other innocuous-seeming things will get you in trouble with Customs and Border Protection, I looked on the cbp.gov website. And looked. And looked. Thirty minutes and 14 browser tabs later, swimming in impenetrable acronyms like APHIS and FAVIR, this is what I was able to ascertain: that the suspension on pepper from the Arava Valley in Israel has been removed. Whew! Also, that no pet birds, peaches or St. John’s Bread may come in from Bermuda.

“Well, that’s fair,” Anthony Bucci, public affairs specialist for Customs and Border Protection, said to me when I noted how hard it was to find detailed contraband information on the agency’s website. He pointed me toward its “Know Before You Go” brochure for general guidelines, but also admitted that there actually is no publicly available, comprehensive list of products that can’t come over the border. But, he contends, that’s because it changes constantly, and he described to me the incredible complexity that governs what officers can and can’t allow in the country.

“Lots of products are seasonal,” he said. “For instance, we’re coming into Valentine’s Day. We’re going to be processing a lot of flowers, and depending on what they are and where they happen to come from, certain ones might have pests. So our officers have to be well trained to look out for certain flowers that come from certain parts of the world.” That seasonality also goes down another layer — at times, Canada for instance might get its mandarin oranges from parts of the world where they are fine to bring into the U.S. But around the holidays, when they are traditional and referred to as “Christmas Oranges,” they’re not considered safe.

In a less than optimally efficient (but charmingly quaint) move, the CBP does put out press releases and travel advisories on its website alerting travelers to what some of those newly or temporarily forbidden products are. Some of the more recent rulings: for Jewish travelers during Sukkot, leave your twigs of willow where you found them, people. But your twigs of myrtle, palm fronds, and ethrogs (huh?) might be let in, depending on a pest inspection. On the other hand, if you happen to be coming home from the Hajj, rest assured that your pile of sand from Mecca and Medina can come into the U.S., as long as officers have determined that there’s no dirt mixed in. Yum!

“So what are some things that travelers didn’t get the memo on?” I asked Mr. Bucci.

“If you can imagine it, someone’s tried to bring it in,” he said, before recounting, just for instance, a recent suitcase officers found with “four finch-like birds, sedated in wooden cages.”

Customs officer Sachdeva (she preferred not to use her first name for security reasons), who is posted at Kennedy airport in New York, understood, though, why people would be tempted to sneak in food: “Pretty much across the board, travelers will try to bring in food from their home country, thinking that they can’t get it back in the U.S. It’s tough, especially with older people, who don’t understand why you’re taking it away. They eat it every day in their country, and they’re bringing it here for their grandkids. Now, if it’s a cooked product, we usually don’t take that. But there are some exceptions. We get guinea pigs all the time, and cooked or not they can carry rabies, so we take those.”

Hearing this, I tried to put myself in the shoes of someone who might fly around with a roasted guinea pig in her bag, and, well, I didn’t find it that hard to imagine. (Confession: I have had a ham taken from me before, and it hurt.) And I could imagine someone getting really bent out of shape if the guinea pig her grandmother roasted for her was accused of having rabies. “So, Officer,” I asked, “do you remember any particular times where you took something away from someone and they got really upset?”

She paused. Then she said, “Well, I mainly deal with narcotics. So, yes.”

Brian A. Terry was waiting with three other agents in a remote area north of Nogales late Tuesday when the gunbattle erupted and he was killed. Four suspects are in custody.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below.

TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) — A shootout between border patrol agents and bandits near Arizona’s troubled boundary with Mexico has left one American agent dead and a suspect wounded, a union leader says.

The clash Tuesday night came after agents spotted suspected bandits known for targeting illegal immigrants along a violent smuggling corridor in the Arizona desert, National Border Patrol Council President T.J. Bonner said.

Brian A. Terry, 40, was waiting with three other agents in a remote area north of the border city of Nogales late Tuesday when the gun battle erupted, Bonner said. Terry died in the shooting, but no other agents were injured.

Border Patrol spokesman Eric Cantu and FBI spokeswoman Brenda Lee Nath declined to confirm Bonner’s account but said that authorities have four suspects in custody and are searching for a fifth. The Border Patrol declined to reveal the country of origin of the suspects.

The shooting followed months of heated political rhetoric on the immigration issue in Arizona as lawmakers passed a sweeping crackdown on illegal immigrants. Politicians pushing for immigration reform cite violence episodes like the Border Patrol shooting as proof that the state and federal governments need to better secure the border.

“It is a stark reminder of the very real dangers our men and women on the front lines confront everyday as they protect our communities and the American people,” said Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. She plans to be in Arizona on Thursday and Friday to meet with Border Patrol agents in Nogales and Tucson.

The shooting occurred in the Border Patrol’s Tucson sector, the busiest gateway for illegal immigrants into the United States. Half of the marijuana seizures along the 1,969-mile southern border are made in the sector, which covers 262 miles of the boundary.

Terry was part of an elite squad similar to a police SWAT team that was sent to a remote area north of Nogales known for border banditry, drug smuggling and violence, said Border Patrol Agent Brandon Judd, president of the local agents’ union.

Terry and the other agents came across a group of five people. There was no sign that they were hauling drugs, but two were carrying rifles, said Judd, who didn’t know what prompted the firefight.

Bonner, whose group represents 17,000 agents, said the fatal shooting shows that the border is still dangerous.

“This is a sign that the politicians and bureaucrats are overly optimistic in their assessment that the borders are more secure now than at any point in our history. It showed just the opposite,” Bonner said.

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, who has railed against border violence and signed Arizona’s new illegal-immigration law earlier this year, struck a similar tone.

“Although we needed no reminder of the ever-increasing dangers along our southern border, this tragedy serves as stark notice that the threats facing all who serve in protecting our state and nation are real and are increasing on a daily basis,” Brewer said.

Terry, a native of the Detroit area, served in the Marines and as a police officer in the Michigan cities of Ecorse and Lincoln Park before joining the Border Patrol in 2007. He wasn’t married and didn’t have any children. He is survived by his mother, father, a brother and two sisters.

Terry’s older sister, Michelle Terry-Balogh, told The Associated Press from Flat Rock, Mich., that her brother loved his job. “It was his life,” she said. “He said it was very dangerous, but he loved what he did and wanted to make a difference.”

“America does not do internally a lot of the things they demand that we do,” Broughton was quoted as saying.

“We shouldn’t stand for that. We should say, ‘We’ll only do things which we consider to be essential and that you Americans also consider essential.’”

Broughton added that British authorities should not “kowtow to the Americans every time they wanted something done.”

“We all know there’s quite a number of elements in the security program which are completely redundant and they should be sort out,” he was quoted as saying.

“Take the iPad: They still haven’t decided if it is a laptop or it isn’t a laptop. So some airports think you should take it out and some think you shouldn’t,” Broughton said.

Colin Matthews, chief executive of BAA PLC, which owns Heathrow airport, says security is subject to regulations set by U.S., European and domestic authorities.

“There are some aspects which have been frustrating to everyone, but equally everyone understands we have to keep the passenger safe,” Matthews said in an interview with British Broadcasting Corp. radio.

Alan West, the security minister in the previous British government, supported Broughton’s complaint and said a multinational agreement could make the checks “much less onerous.”

“We have had requirement on requirement laid on top of each other, and certainly I need to be convinced about all these various layers,” West told the BBC.

“I do think it does need to be rationalized because I think we have gone too far. There are too many layers, too much inconsistency,” West said.