ratbastid

I thought the shoe thing was ridiculous. I think the War on Liquids is patently absurd--as Smith points out, it's ineffective and the design of it all but admits that.

In the days after 9/11 when there were National Guard guys at the security stations holding fucking machine guns... That was totally over the top.

It's almost like somebody's testing us to see how much we'll put up with, just how far they can push us in the name of "security". I can picture a cabal of people sitting around a table in a dim, smoky room, muttering about what they can make us do next. Maybe there are bombers out there who are using socks dipped in explosives. We should make people turn in their socks! Ooh, or maybe people with hair longer than five inches won't be allowed to board--all that hair could hide a weapon, after all. We can have official military barbers stationed at every security checkpoint for last-minute trims. Maybe we could make people walk on their hands through the metal detector!

EDIT: Ustwo, you're a scientist. You know better than to turn correlation into causation. Your gut hunch that the TSA's practices have made us safer go directly against the expert quoted in the OP. It's like if I said I just have this feeling that flossing doesn't make my gums any healthier. I haven't lost any teeth, after all. As a dental expert, you'd know better and your opinion would, in most objective eyes, win over mine. Same deal here.