"This is not considered a sexual assault, sir."
A friend of mine is passing through airport security at San Francisco International, and the Transportation Security Administration takes a toy away from his infant daughter. The toy is a sort of liquid-filled baby rattle, smaller than an ice cream cone. It's doubtful there is more than 3 ounces of liquid inside, but the guard "can't be sure," and so the toy goes into the garbage barrel, where it joins all the other highly dangerous liquids and pointy doodads hauled in by the screeners that day.
Bad enough, but now what if I told you that my friend is an airline pilot?
Mike pleaded his case at SFO, just as I had done in New York, but the guard wasn't the least bit impressed by his Federal Aviation Authority certificates or his airline credentials. In other words, common sense wasn't allowed into the picture. Simple common sense. That, perhaps above anything else, is what is so acutely missing from airport security.
