Avedon Carol rants on the Transportation Security Administration:
I haven’t linked to the nipple-ring story because every time I see a reference to it I go into a towering rage about the way TSA drones have been given the power to hold you and all of your possessions hostage to their whim in the name of security theater. And, obviously, they know it. This is a particularly blatant example of it, but you sense it every time they insist to you that some innocuous item in your possession is deemed a threat to all civilization that you can’t take on the plane with you and must discard it, probably so they can retrieve it and keep it. You just know. And there’s nothing you can do about it because you paid hundreds or thousands of dollars to take this plane at this time because you need to get on it and everything will be ruined if you don’t, so you have to put up with this horrible crap and abandon your pride and your belongings. And while you may tell jokes about it later and try to pretend it’s no big deal, it’s a big damned deal and if you aren’t outraged by it you’ve already forgotten what “free country” means.
Word.