Your tax dollars at work

I think that Passenger Forced to Remove Nipple Rings just says it all about what's so messed-up about our notions of terror-proofing America. In a nutshell, we're taking the same approach to so-called "security" that McDonald's takes to cooking: Dumb down the entire process. Except in this case we also hang a badge on the practitioners.

Combine a dizzying array of rules with unquestionable authority and you get a system ripe for abuse and eventual subversion as people learn how to game that system. You surely noticed that Ms. Hamlin was allowed to keep her belly-button ring, which amply demonstrates that rules don't have to make sense. Rather like you knew your parents had no real reason (beyond pure adult fiat) when they resorted to "Because I said so!"

And that, friends and bretheren, is no way to run a democracy. We're not children, and with our so-called leaders acting like spoiled brats on a regular basis, it's well past the time we question their claims to know better than we do.

Bottom line: We pay them handsomely to keep an eye on the threats to this nation. With good old-fashioned brains and detective work and open eyes. We most emphatically do not pay them to shield us from the menace of women with body piercings. My tax dollars already subsidize quite enough stupidity, thank you very little. Don't terrorize--even on a low-level--the people you're allegedly "protecting". Because that's just Superbowl-caliber advertising for how stupid we're willing to make ourselves when we're threatened. And eventually our enemies will figure that out.