TSA Keeping Us Safe By Taking Sleeping Child's Pillow

The security of our planes and airports is truly in the hands of some of the dumbest most unimaginative people on the face of the planet. The latest genius bit of security theater to emanate from the TSA is to forbid passengers from getting up during the last 60 to 90 minutes of a flight. The idea is to prevent a terrorist like Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab from going to the bathroom and doing something nefarious anywhere near the plane's descent. I'm sure it will never occur to Islamist scum to try to detonate their bombs, say, 93 or 120 or 206 minutes before scheduled arrival.

So, how's this for protecting us all?

Amanda Cain, 41, flew on China Eastern from Beijing to Los Angeles with her 5-year-old daughter, Emily. ... "The last hour and a half, they said we can't move at all," Ms. Cain said. "That was very hard for her. The flight attendant came by and took the pillow from her head. I didn't like that. Why did they have to wake her up? It would be better for her to sleep." Then Emily threw up, never any parent’s dream, but all the more unpleasant when the bathroom cannot be visited.

Mustn't allow children to use pillows. If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times: Little kids might use pillows to hide chemical bombs. But only in the last 90 minutes of a flight, of course.

Meanwhile, because even the hair-trigger perception of ethnic profiling is surely worse than allowing 300 innocent passengers and their plane to get blown up, we're going to frisk five-year-olds from China and wheelchair-bound octogenarians from New Hampshire to the possible exclusion of 22-year-old Mohammed, the engineering student from Yemen who paid cash for his one-way ticket; or Hakim, the 30-something Saudi preacher, who happens to be traveling without luggage.

Makes sense, no?

No.

Comments

[Mike]

To me it almost seems like all the extra non-security actually makes flying less safe. If I were a terrorist I'd see it as a bigger challenge with a much bigger reward.

If the object is to cause terror, surely hitting a target that is 'more' protected would have a bigger effect. It shows that they can't be stopped. The fact that all the additional measures don't add any real protection make it extra attractive.

[Everlasting Phelps]

I am starting to wonder if the actual goal of the gummint is to get people to stop flying in general.

[LibertyCowboy]

The terrorists are just using economy of force. The lost productivity due to the extra security measures is the econmoic equivlent of loosing an airliner every day.

If Al Quadea actually tried destroying that many planes they'd run out of terrorists before 2011. It would however, still be safer the driving.

[Don]

Its not the safeness of the flying that is the problem. It is the safeness of the crashes. You are less likely to survive a plane crash than a car crash. I'm constantly amazed when people use that safe flying diversion.

[George Arndt]

e

God forbid that the TSA put into to place sensible, common sense policies instead of meaningless rules to make us "feel" safer.
And having a do not fly list with 500,000 mostly innocent people doesn’t help things.

[Lindeseig]

e, I'm completely with you...as much as I have gotten used to the entire security rigamarole in the last 8 years, and can prepare myself to get through security in about five minutes or less, some of it still seems utterly unnecessary and more of a burden on travelers than anything else. I'm flying to Israel, of all places, next month and can only imagine the hoops I'll need to jump through. Taking away laptops, IPods, and in-flight movies and closing the bathroom for the last hour of flying doesn't do much at all to make me feel safer - annoyed, however, is a whole other story, especially when you're talking about a 10+ hour flight.

[MissTSA]

Dont feel like typing but have to get my point across so excuse the errors, but i'll b using internet talk. Anyways i work for TSa and i hate to see blogs like these. people are so ignorant and i put my life on the line at work everyday so they can have a safe trip...smh. The passage above clearly states that the flight attendant took the pillow from the little kid yet Tsa still take the blame? i have never heard of this 90 minute rule in my 2 years of working for the TSa so i'm sure it is enforced and made up by the airlines. Everybody wants to fly safe, but they dont want to b checked. We have to be fair and check everyone or then u guys will complain that we discriminate. Also terrorist can b anyone, they live here study here learn our habits traditions and language just to carry out plots. As far as people in wheelchairs go... we have found guns on a man in a wheelchair... guns, fully loaded. not everyone who looks innocent is. and another thing that kills me is that when someone breaks the rules and something happens everyone is quick to point the finger at TSA but yet none of u want to cooperate...smh Also before u listen to everything u hear.. google TSA blog they clear up the most recent accusation. finally i just want to say if u people worked for TSA and have seen the things i have seen you wouldn't be so negative about it. There are crazy people out there, eveen those who aren't terrorist

[Moot Duff]

LOLLOLOLOL. Your life on the line? Please.

PS - you DON'T check everyone. You use your capricious and petty tyrant powers to attempt to make yourselves feel good and to fool the idiots of the general populace that anything you do makes them "safer." Good job, it seems to be working marvelously.

The TSA is *easily* the worst "government agency" even surpassing the SEC and the DEA.