08/15/2005

The TSA does it again! In their ongoing quest to keep America’s skies safer for travelers, their laughable No-Fly List has snared a new set of terrorists…

Ingrid Sanden of Washington, D.C. was boarding a flight home in Phoenix when she was stopped because her daughter’s name showed up on the list. While Senator Kennedy might be accustomed to something like this, it surprised Ms. Sanden.

Her daughter is one year old.

Yep, that’s right. Definitely a terrorist threat, that baby. Sarah Zapolsky and her husband had a similar experience when flying out of Dulles International Airport– their eleven-month-old son was on the No-Fly List. After a half-hour of wrangling with the airline ticket agents, including faxing a copy of their son’s passport (lucky he had one, I guess), they were finally allowed to board the plane.

Now, I’m an outspoken critic of the TSA and their comically stupid antics. It’s sure easy to point out the flaws in this system (and there are many), especially with incidents like this. Yet despite stories like this, which seem to occur over and over, the TSA and the whole Department of Homeland Security continue to insist that their methods are working.

I ask this, then: show me one– just one— example of an incident where TSA security managed to stop someone from boarding a plane and doing damage. Show me the guy who was smuggling a bomb, or a gun, or a set of Ginsu knives, and fully intended to use them for harm. I’ve not heard of a single such case in all the years we’ve been enduring this frustrating and flawed airport “security” routine.

Perhaps the TSA keeps those incidents under wrap? Perhaps they don’t want to share their successes because they’re worried about some kind of national security issues? I can’t imagine why, however, because it seems to me that trumpeting their success would be a further deterrent to those with evil plans. It would show that the TSA is effective, that these security measures are working. So it’s hard for me to conceive that they’re hiding their successes. As such, the only logical conclusion is that there aren’t any.