TSA to Children: Trust the Random Touch

Senator of the good people of Connecticut, Joe Lieberman,  explains the root of the problem:


“It’s an annoyance to people,” Lieberman said of the security measures.
Why they return him to the Senate is incomprehensible. Joe is talking about TSA security measures.  The scope. The grope. Kiddie touching. Vagina touching. And the best he can say is that it’s annoying.  If his finger isn’t on the pulse of his constituents, what part of the body is it on?

The Transportation Security Administration, ever sensitive to its dual mission of protecting Americans from terrorism on airplanes while keeping them cowering in fear in airports, announced that it is changing the game.



Children 12 years old and younger soon will no longer be required to remove their shoes at airport security checkpoints, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told Congress on Tuesday. The policy also includes other ways to screen young children without resorting to a pat-down that involves touching private areas on the body.


Napolitano said there may be some exceptions to keep airport security unpredictable. Terrorists have plotted to use children as suicide bombers, and some children still may be required to remove their shoes to keep security random.


Does this take the air out of your bubble of annoyance?  Some will argue that this is a step in the right direction, and reflects our government sensitivity to the will of the American flying public.  But what of their fear that of the tens of thousands of planes that fly safely and without incident, their will be the first in ten years to be flown into a building?  Are they not giving the terrorists a free shot by letting the occasional infant wear shoes?

Fear not, scared masses.  Your government would not forget you.  What’s not being said is that the TSA is moving toward a risk-based approach, according to administrator John Pistole.  Sounds great.  Cries for “common sense” demand that we leave our beautiful babies alone, stop molesting them, stop making them cry in fear and loathing.  They aren’t terrorists. It’s nuts.

So who are terrorists?  They have a list at the TSA the includes all the people they think might be terrorists, or otherwise just don’t like.  But if they limited themselves to the list, none of these shenanigans would be needed, and you and I would be allowed to wear shoes in airports as well.

They could profile terrorists, but that’s just code for picking out people with swarthy mediterranean good looks and subjecting them to the searches that blonds would avoid.  And it would leave us exposed to “home-grown” terrorists, who look like just like us.  How in the world could we ever stop them if we can’t tell from their darkened complexion that they are dangerous?

Certainly, it’s in the TSA’s interest to back off the children.  Few acts of government have generated as much outrage as young children having their “private parts” touched by agents.  Or as Joe Lieberman says, annoyed. 

The trick for the TSA is to modify procedures in such a way as to be embraced again by the American public as their protector and friend, to whom people will willingly submit without fear, question or annoyance.  They know that these children, whose videos enrage normal people, aren’t going to blow up a plane.  They just can’t figure out how to make up a viable story to justify their continued performance of security theater if they start admitting that much of it, if not all of it, is worthless.

Janet Napolitano is a sharp cookie, however, and knows how to toss in that little zinger that seems to make perfect sense.


[T]there may be some exceptions to keep airport security unpredictable.

Exceptions?  You won’t know if it’s the exception or the rule, because you only see a teeny-tiny bit of what happens on the security line.  Does this mean one in ten will be groped? One in a hundred?  Or one whenever somebody feels like it?  She can’t say since that would undermine the whole point of unpredictability.  Smart.

Does this do it for you?  Are you now satisfied that the TSA has found the tipping point where you will be happily obedient for your own protection, if not the protection of others, knowing that children can wear shoes except when they can’t? 

Or will that happy place come when you see the agents scoping and groping only the swarthy, letting real American’s walk through unmolested and whisked away to their waiting plane?  After all, it’s just common sense. 

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