SECURITY BREACH
The TSA takes the cake for sheer bureaucratic stupidity
BY CHUCK MUTH

Chuck Muth is president and CEO of Citizen Outreach. He is a professional political consultant. Find more about him and read more of his work at www.chuckmuth.com. Other stories by Chuck Muth

Hate is a pretty strong word. But not strong enough to express how I feel about the TSA (Transportation Security Administration), which runs the security checkpoints at American airports. I may fear the IRS, and I may dread the DMV — but for sheer bureaucratic stupidity and its affront to personal liberties, the TSA has earned a special place of loathing in my heart. 

My wife and three kids recently returned home from vacation and dutifully filed in line for the ol’ “Papers, please” routine at the Honolulu airport. I handed our five boarding passes and our ID to the lone TSA guy who gets paid to look at boarding documents all day long. But this genius couldn’t find our names on the boarding passes and had to ask for help. In the meantime, the line behind us was getting longer and longer, and the folks in that line were getting testier by the minute. 

Finally, we’re approved to move to Phase Two, much to the collective relief of those behind us. Off with the shoes and belts. Out with the laptop. Then one-by-one we file through the metal detector, miraculously not setting off any bells or sirens. Not good enough. 

Apparently our middle-class white family with three young children — including a 16-month-old baby — returning from vacation didn’t sit right in some security bureaucrat’s mind. So we were all instructed to move to the side for “enhanced” screening while our carry-on bags, including the baby’s stroller, were hand-inspected. The TSA agent then proceeded to get a female agent to pat down my wife and two daughters before feeling me up-and-down himself. At which point my wife was instructed to hold out the baby Rafiki-like (see, “The Lion King”) for a thorough pat-down.

In the meantime, another crackerjack TSA agent was busy rifling through our carry-on bags — and, lo and behold, he caught my wife trying to smuggle onboard a tube of skin cream that exceeded the federally mandated 3-ounce limit. The guy informs us he’s confiscating the potentially lethal tube of Lubriderm, much to the relief of the other passengers standing in line who clearly were worried it might be used to send us all to a watery grave in Davy Jones’ Locker somewhere over the Pacific. 

Now for the kicker: On the exact same day, CNN reported that “a passenger who went through an airport security checkpoint — before remembering that he had a loaded gun — is facing charges after going back to report his error, authorities said.” So a loaded gun made it past professional airport screeners, but not a tube of skin cream? 

The real crime here was perpetrated by President Bush and the idiots in Congress who foisted this asinine airport security regime on the land of the free and home of the brave. And for all the dolts out there who mistakenly think this ludicrous TSA crud is needed to make Americans safer, I can only refer to you the immortal words of founding father Ben Franklin: “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”