Written By : John Hawkins

Rather than copying the best security procedures in the world, the ones used by Israel’s El Al, our own TSA has decided to go with a strip and grope approach. Either you get to let airport security look at you naked or they’re allowed to run their hands over you like it’s prom night at Molesterville High.

Sadly, this isn’t even an effective way to stop terrorists from bringing bombs on a plane:

According to a spokesperson for QinetiQ, another body scanner manufacturer, airport body scanners would be “unlikely” to detect many of the explosive devices used by terrorist groups [BBC News]. QinetiQ said the technology probably wouldn’t have detected the Christmas day underwear bomb. Neither would the scanners have caught the explosives from the 2006 airliner liquid bomb plot, nor the explosives used in the 2005 London Tube train bombing. The body scanners aren’t very useful for detecting liquids and plastics and can only help spotlight irregularities under a person’s clothes, said the spokesperson. Singling out every irregularity for further screening will place a heavy burden on airport security (read: bring a pillow with you to the airport).

So, either airport security gets to look at you naked or they get to feel up your wife, “bad touch your child,” and feel your crotch for absolutely nothing because terrorists can just walk right through the scanners with explosives. At a minimum, they should at least hire attractive members of the opposite sex to give you your screenings — along with a little kiss first, because you should always kiss someone before you do something like that to him. You can’t kiss the kids, of course, but they can at least make it fun for them, too:

All of this is, of course, of little concern to the politicians in D.C. who don’t have to go through this — like Janet Napolitano and Barack Obama. That’s why Mark Hemmingway’s suggestion is so brilliant:

Two weeks ago, my wife flew alone out to Colorado with our two young children. Unaware that the TSA had instituted new and incredibly invasive new security procedures, my wife called me distressed after getting frisked by the TSA. Or as my wife put it, “in some cultures I would be married to my screener by now.” She was joking, but make no mistake — my wife was incredibly disturbed by how intimate a security pat down she received.

So here’s my not-so-modest proposal: If the President’s Homeland Security department is so adamant that this is the absolute best way to prevent terrorism, I think the President and his family should voluntarily submit to one of the new invasive pat down procedures. I know the Obamas don’t fly commercial at all these days, so they should probably get a pretty good idea what the rest of us are putting up with.

The President and his family — preferably with DHS Secretary Janet “The system worked” Napolitano — should show up at Dulles or Reagan airport on a weekday with a camera crew in tow, as airport pat downs are typically done in full view of hundreds of travelers. All of America will to see the TSA handling the President’s crown jewels. Then a rubber-gloved federal agent will run his hands all over his wife and daughter’s privates while he watches.

This is what Barack Obama and Janet Napolitano want for the rest of us, is it not? So, if other people’s children have to put up with this, why shouldn’t Barack Obama stand there and watch while airport security runs their hands over Sasha, Malia, and Michelle’s crotches? Let the Obamas do at least that much and I still won’t agree with the policy, but I will at least give Obama credit for putting his money where his mouth is on this issue.

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