William Saletan annoys me with his snark today:
Twelve days ago, I flew from London's Heathrow Airport to Washington's Dulles airport. In my shoulder bag, I had two bottles of water and a portable alarm clock. If the security officers at Heathrow had taken my alarm clock and my bottles, I still had a wristwatch and a tube of toothpaste. If they'd taken those, I had butterscotch candies and three pens full of ink. If they'd taken those, I had a container of prescribed pills and a key that unlocks my car by remote control.
You want to stop people from blowing up planes with sophisticated explosives and detonators? Start confiscating pills and car keys.
The simple answer here is nothing anybody as pampered as Saletan wants to hear. NO CARRYONS PERIOD.
So begins a new mountain of froth and saliva over increased delays at airports, and why anybody with an IQ above 100 (which presumably the average screener doesn't have) could think of a way to get through security with some gel-like substance. And of course TSA has already anticipated this level of carping by actually having a well-articulated list of contraband, which includes lip gloss. I know this because an NPR reporter squirrelled hers through today at LAX and reported it on KPCC.
We're not serious yet.
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