I am not a copyright attorney either, but I do teach about copyright and fair use to my CS students, so I have some passing familiarity on the topic.

First of all, the image says "Courtesy of Infowars" beneath it, which implies that Bob obtained permission to use the image. If so, all of this discussion is moot.

But for the sake of argument, let's assume that Bob didn't obtain permission. Does fair use apply? Bob is using the image for a non-profit, educational use (i.e. commentary on the event). The image documents an historical event, rather than a fictional work of creative expression. The original image is still available on the Infowars site; Bob's use of the image does not diminish its value on the Infowars site. And while Bob used the most important parts of the original image, he took care to use the smallest portion he could to make his point. All four items directly address the elements of the "four-point test" of 17 USC 107.

As I said, I'm no lawyer, and I'm certainly not a judge ... but it looks to me like the use of this image is well within the fair use defense.

I'm not a lawyer either but, like you, am very familiar with copyright law. I agree with everything you say except that if he did indeed "touch it up a bit", meaning other than cropping, there could be an issue.

As to the incident itself, it doesn't look like any of the three people involved acted appropriately, but I'd put slightly more blame on the TSO and LEO since their job was to de-escalate the issue and it doesn't look like they succeeded.

Yah, in a rare exception, I'm with the TSA on this particular incident.

Though that might be because I'm a bit biased against Mr. Jones, who I once considered amusing, and now just irresponsible.

The TSO and LEO's could have engaged their brains, however, and realized they were getting played. Other LEO's who he has done this to have handled it with some amazing tact and skill that completely defused his ability to get what he wanted. The TSA, however, in every case, has embraced being played the fool with such eagerness it does at the end of the day end up with them just being fools.

Fair use is pushing it.

Fair use includes responding to your critics on issues of compelling public interest, and that includes whatever media they make their points with. The balance is "what is in the public interest" balanced against "what are the property rights of the owner." Since the article goes to his state of mind, which is clearly belligerent within the photo, they are probably within their rights.

Another part of that though is how aggressive the rights holder is. This is why on the one hand, any evening on CNN you can see blurry video with the words TMZ watermarked across it. On the other hand, nobody dares mess with New York Times content, as it's well known they aggressively go after everyone full tilt who excerpts their content beyond their strict, and well publicized, fair use guidelines.

But why crop the image to conveniently leave out the TSO in the background standing by and enjoying the scene? Is that the best use of her time? Real professional.

i dont agree with his last bullet point, in mia on 01/6/13 both myself and the gent in front was asked to remove our shoes in the pre check lane.

Gotta keep the potential terrorists guessing and on their toes (literally), right?

Yes, they've got a layer cake of security full of random surprises, and who doesn't love cake and surprises, right?

So that's what they do if you don't take off you shoes?
Arrest you? At least Alex had the courage to play it out.
No-shoes jail sounds like a bit of a joke.

The two images posted above do indeed look different. To be fair, we don't know which image was given to/taken by TSA. Maybe they were given the harsher original image (which they cropped) and InfoWars retouched the full-size version they posted. Or, maybe TSA retouched and cropped the image as has been suggested here.

Either way ... a fair use claim would still seem to be a strong one (IANAL).

I think we can all agree that Infowars must have voluntarily surrendered its image to the TSA blog.

But not their shoes.