Thanks Patrick for continuing to publicize your perspective on this subject. It is NOT one that we hear too much, but rather it's one that the leadership who is in charge doesn't hear enough, or the fallout from which they think they are immune...and so far they have been proven to be.

Keep exposing these idiotic policies and let's hope some citizen action results in these security frauds being exposed for the neurotic dim-wittedness that so characterize the current level of proficiency when it comes to nearly all aspects of governmental control that invade our daily lives.

Formula is permitted. From the TSA website:

Declare larger liquids. Medications, baby formula and food, breast milk, and juice are allowed in reasonable quantities exceeding three ounces and are not required to be in the zip-top bag. Declare these items for inspection at the checkpoint.

All this info is available at http://www.tsa.gov/311/

Parent of the teether should have been allowed to keep the food even though he or she erred in not declaring it. (Though I can see why they took the water. Bottled water is available in the terminal and on the plane -- there's a less compelling case for making exceptions on that.)

I agree that some of the TSA rules are dumb, and some of the personnel are not the sharpest tools in the shed. But it seems an awful lot of the folks complaining here didn't do their homework, didn't know the rules, and then are pissed that TSA didn't make an exception for them.

Exceptions require discretion. And if you really think TSA workers are so stupid, do you want them using their discretion?

I have a friend who travels with liquid medication. He has it labeled clearly, always declares it, and has never had a problem. For safety's sake, he printed out the rules from the TSA website and carries that with him.

If it's something important, like your medication or your baby's food, it seems worthwhile to know your rights.

I vowed not to travel to the US until they got rid of the requirement to fingerprint all of our 10 fingers. Of course, since they bought that requirement in,things have just continued to get worse.

Since I don't have to travel to the US on business, I'm not too worried about missing out on a fun holiday. Does anyone travel to the US for a fun holiday any more? What gyps me is that the US does not have a transit system for passengers whose final destination is not the US. No, we have to disembark from the airplane, collect our bags, go through immigration and get fingerprinted, go through customs and get searched, find our next gate, and go through the security rigmarole to get our bags checked onto the next flight and ourselves through the gauntlet of the TSA.

So, not only am I not going on holidays to the US, it's difficult to go on holidays to places like Canada without passing through US security. From Australia/NZ, the only way to avoid the US is to take the one JAL flight a week from Tokyo to Vancouver. Naturally, if I'm going to Europe, I go via Asia. And I go through the airport transit so that my bags are checked all the way through, and I only have to do the security at my first departure point, and immigration at the final destination.

If US citizens vote for the idiots who put in these measures, well, it's instant karma. For those of us who'd just like to pass through, without needing any access to our checked luggage for the duration of the journey, a little mercy (and sufficient numbers of transit lounges) would be nice.

Wow dude, that makes good sense to me. Do it yall.

JT

www.FireMe.To/udi

Cheers to Patrick Smith. His article gets at the lunacy of the TSA system. The whole thing is a moronic invention of a horde of dead-ass bureaucrats who don't know how to protect anything except their pensions and their posteriors. Everytime I get near security I get angry. Clowns who couldn't hold a job at Wal-mart looking for "terrorists" - once they pulled me out of line for extra attention, and dumpy guy poked my hip bone and asked me, "What's that?"

"My hip bone," I said, "Am I allowed to bring that?"

"I don't know," he muttered as he walked away.

What's really depressing to contemplate is that the whole stupid dog and pony show will go on forever. It reassures the idiots.

You know how to make the US instantly safer? Get US troops out of the Middle East now.

We all know that this liquids ban is BS, but this was driven home even more clearly when I travelled through Japan waaay back in 2002.

You go through security - if they found a bottle of water (which they did) they set it on top of a machine that flashed either red (danger Will Robinson) or green (nothing bad here).

So the technology exists to avoid all this bullshit, but I suppose that the intent of whoever orchestrated the events of 9/11 was to keep the American public fearful, in-check and afraid to speak up.

I for one hope Patrick continues to address the TSA idiocy. Maybe eventually someone will get the message. I know Flight Attendants in uniform that have had corkscrews confiscated from them at security. They get on board and what do they find? Corkscrews. Not as good as the ones they had confiscated (which is why they carry their own), but corkscrews none-the-less.

I doubt the next President will change anything. Hell even those who were pinning their hopes on Obama should realize that he just voted in favor of your telephone conversations being monitored - all in the name of "Homeland Security", a Nazi'ish term if ever there was one.

Even if complaining does little to change things as fast as we would like, we have to expect they will change.

If you don't believe that, then look at it this way...

The last thing we want is the younger generations thinking this is the way things should be.

I always think of that old film Rosmary's Baby that came out before I was born:

The whole movie, the staid, conservative couple seems to be the semblance of normality and turn out to be leaders of a satanic cult. Rosemary, sold out to them by her aspiring actor husband, eventually figures out what is going on. She runs and tries to fight. Then at the end of of the movie, the baby is born and taken from Rosemary. She grabs a knife and goes looking for the baby. She finds it surrounded by cult memembers. The leader of the cult then convinces her to put down her knife and "be a mother to the baby" who is at that moment crying like normal babies. Rosemary goes to the crib and begins rocking the baby - which is then shown with it's demonic eyes.

The real horror is when we ACCEPT the "evil" in our lives.