TSA Pats Down 3-Year-Old

Another airport security brouhaha: The TSA body-searched a 3-year-old girl at the airport in Chattanooga, Tenn., prompting screaming and tears. And perhaps embarrassingly for the TSA, the girl happened to be the daughter of a TV news reporter, who captured about 17 seconds of her ordeal on his cell phone. It started, explained dad Steve Simon, after Mandy's teddy bear was taken from her for screening; she started crying, and had a "tough time" going through the metal detector. The alarm went off twice, which meant she "must be hand-searched." But, asks dad, "Did it have to be like this?"

“The American approach to flight security misses the point, thanks to an ‘everyone must suffer equally’ approach,” writes Ed Morrissey at Hot Air Blog. Sure, terrorists might “use a child as a mule”—indeed, they’ve done it before. But “shouldn’t TSA have taken the whole family aside and questioned Mom and Dad first to see if they got a hint of some ulterior motive?” asks Morrissey. And if we are going to search kids, maybe the TSA should train its employees on how to do it “without terrifying” them. Click here for another mess.

(More TSA stories.)