Given other common things I've seen filtered, I wouldn't be surprised. I don't think the intent is to sensor as much as it is to keep the news a little more focussed. Still, I wish there was a bit a transparency with a viewable list of what is and isn't filtered.
Turn on showdead in your profile and you can see what is being killed.
But even that isn't the whole picture - for example this thread has over 100 points and has magically disappeared from the front page in only a few hours while topics with far fewer points stick around. So there must be an invisible gravity switch.
At least one of his colleagues claims to have had their luggage tampered with as well, so this might have been done in conjunction with someone tipping off the TSA about planted items.
http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/politica...
http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/331811
HN completely bans his name being mentioned in topic titles apparently.