The Transportation Security Administration, a universally loathed government agency, is facing a shortfall, despite its more than $8 billion budget. Instead of having a debate over what effective airport security might actually look like and how much should reasonably be spent on the honestly rare threat of commercial-air-travel-based terrorism, there was a debate over how best to come up with the money needed for all the radioactive naked picture machines and bomb-sniffing dogs. The Democrats suggested passing on the cost of ineffective, cumbersome and intrusive security theater to citizens, via higher fees on airfares. The Republicans, even more predictably, suggested cutting spending that directly helps poor people to ensure there is enough to spend on stopping imaginary future 9/11s.

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That is what makes the policy of Delta Airlines so shockingly un-American.  In Austin, Delta had not one but two lines that fed into the Transportation Security Administration checkpoint area. One line was mixed race, mixed class and mixed age. The other line was usually empty. Now and then a white, middle-aged man would appear in the second line and the first line would be halted as he went directly into the TSA checkpoint.

“Who are those guys?” I asked a TSA officer, when I reached the front of the second-class citizen line.

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All of these measures in place today -- the liquids and gels rules, the pointy object confiscations, the multiple ID checks, the body-scanners and the pat-downs -- would they have stopped the Sept. 11 attacks?

Of course not. The success of the 2001 attacks had nothing to do with box cutters. The hijackers' critical tool was an intangible one: the element of surprise. That is, taking advantage of our understanding and expectations of a hijacking. What weapons they had in their bags was irrelevant. They could have used anything.

For that matter, would any of these measures have prevented the terrorist bombing of Pan Am 103? How about the bombings of Air India 182 or UTA 772?

Again the answer is no. It was bombs in the lower holds that got those planes.

I don't know about you, but when I'm on a plane I worry a lot more about what's going on below deck -- in checked luggage and cargo -- than I do about passengers and their carry-ons. The Transportation Security Administration tells us that all checked bags are scanned nowadays for explosives, and that's about the most valuable thing the agency does for us. I just hope agents do it with as much over-the-top scrutiny as they use to paw through carry-ons looking for forks and toothpaste.

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That's right, two week ago guards in Las Vegas took a frosted cupcake away from a woman named Rebecca Hains as she prepared to board a flight to Boston. The frosting, you see, was "gel-like" and thus a potential security threat.

I'm really not sure how to approach this one, other than to weep uncontrollably.

According to a Transportation Security Administration spokesperson the confiscation was in error -- the work of an overzealous (or maybe just hungry) screener. "In general, cakes and pies are allowed in carry-on luggage," said the spokesperson. Still, I don't know if that makes it OK. That we can use the words "cupcake" and "security" in the same sentence is a bright red flag that something is very, very wrong in America. TSA says the incident is "under review." I'd love to be a fly on the wall for that meeting.

This is yet more fodder, of course, for my American Hysteria Hall of Shame.  The hall isn't limited to airport security foibles, but clearly TSA is gunning for the bronze, the silver and the gold. Operation Cupcake joins a pretty fat list:

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A couple of weeks ago  I proposed my idea for the American Hysteria Hall of Shame, a ranking of our more laughable and self-defeating overreactions to perceived security threats over the past decade. Motto: "Malignantibus Parta! Timor vincit omnia!"

Safely assured of a top spot in the Hall, or so I thought, was the time I had a butter knife confiscated by overzealous TSA guards. I mean, what could be more ridiculous than taking a butter knife from a uniformed, on-duty pilot?

Answer: confiscating a fork from a uniformed, on-duty airline pilot.

It happened the other day in Mexico City, at the special crew inspection checkpoint at Benito Juarez International Airport. Yes, I'm dropping the "American" part and changing the name to the "Security Hysteria Hall of Shame," since, as you'll see, we are not the only ones who have lost our minds.

I knew there was trouble when the X-ray belt came to a stop and I was asked to open my bag.

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And in place of "something funny" you may substitute the words "exasperating" or "troubling" or "a national embarrassment."

The latest from the Department of You Can't Make This Up involves a teenage girl who was not allowed to carry a purse onto a flight in Norfolk, Va., because it was embroidered with the design of a handgun.

That's right, embroidered. According to reports, 17-year-old Virginia Gibbs was told by Transportation Security Administration that bringing such a purse through the checkpoint constitutes a federal offense. She was given the option of giving up the purse or sending it along as checked luggage.

TSA says the problem is that such designs can be mistaken by scanners for the real thing, resulting in checkpoint closures and delays. On the one hand that is not unreasonable (though it does make us think that if you can't tell the difference between a purse and a gun, how good is this technology at identifying explosives?). On the other, more logical hand, once they saw and realized it was a purse, what would the harm have been in giving it back to the girl and letting her through? If there was going to be a closure or a delay, it already happened. Confiscating the bag no longer served a purpose.

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Yes, I think it has. Presenting the new look of Malaysia Airlines.

Hey, wow, a swooshy thing. How original. It's two swooshes, actually, squashed and scribbled together like tandem shark fins in a peculiar and wholly unattractive pattern.

When I say "swooshy thing" I am talking specifically about the "Generic Meaningless Swoosh Thing" or GMST, the concept that, over the past 10 years or so, has become the lowest common denominator of airline brand identity, seen worldwide from Aeromexico to El Al. The term was coined by Amanda Collier, a graphic design veteran, quoted in one of this column's earlier livery discussions. Said Collier, "the GMST is what happens when any corporation gathers senior management, their internal creative department, and a design agency in order to develop a new logo. The managers will talk about wanting something that shows their company is 'forward thinking' and 'in motion,' and no fewer than three of them will reference Nike, inventors of the original Swoosh. The creative types smile, nod, secretly stab themselves with their X-Acto knives, and shit out variations on a motion theme until everyone gets tired of arguing about it."

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Two of the most frightening words in air travel, those are.

You know what I'm talking about: The Transportation Security Administration checkpoint line is crawling along at its usual slug's place, when all of a sudden it groans to a total stop.

"BAG CHECK!" bellows a screener.

Up ahead, at the luggage scanner, a guard has spied something unusual on the monitor. He switches off the belt and calls for a colleague. And for the next several minutes, nothing happens.

The seconds tick by as the guard waits for his colleague. One minute passes. Then two. Then three. All the while, the line behind you grows longer.

"BAG CHECK!"

Eventually a supervisor ambles over. There's a conference. For some reason these situations require a sort of football huddle, with lots of whispering and pointing, before finally things get moving again. At last the bag is either sent on its way, or removed for a closer, hands-on inspection.

The obvious question: Is there a reason the offending piece of luggage can't simply be pulled from the machine and screened separately -- on a table behind or to one side of the main platform? The screener could archive the scan if need be, and the belt and the line could keep moving.

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As most people do, I remember the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, with an acute clarity: the subway ride out to Logan, and the inordinately large cockroach I saw crawling along the platform at Government Center station. My plane to Florida, taking off only seconds behind American's doomed Flight 11. The diversion to Charleston, S.C., where I joined a gasping throng of fellow strandees gathered around a TV in a terminal restaurant. And later, the long drive home in a rented car.

But I wish, as a country, that we were past this.

It's not the anniversary itself that irks me. The 10-year mark is -- or should be -- worthy of our solemn respects and a national timeout. But commemorating the attacks would feel a lot more meaningful if, in fact, we had ever stopped commemorating them. Our healing process has been never-ending -- occasionally introspective and edifying, but all too often maudlin and suffocating.

Maybe that's a terrible and insensitive thing to say, I don't know.

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2. Obvious fact of the day: A new study by the Pew Institute reveals that "30 percent of adults 18-29 have pretended to be on the phone in order to avoid human interaction." The other 70 percent are either playing Angry Birds or sexting, no duh.

3. Terrifying Twitter of the day: Courtney Stodden, the child (but not childlike) bride of 51-year-old Doug Hutchison, continues to prove her classiness online with updates like this:

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Everybody loves JetBlue. Me, I find it overrated. Its service is no better or worse than that of other U.S. airlines, and the carrier's ballyhooed Terminal 5 at Kennedy Airport is the most disappointing airport building in America.

Not to pick on it unduly, but another thing about JetBlue that irks me is the manner in which flight attendants, during their pre-departure public address spiel, introduce the cockpit crew. They do it by first names only. "Our flight is under the command of Capt. Kevin," so it went on a JFK-Boston hop a few weeks back. "Assisted by First Officer Jamie."

First Officer Jamie? The sound of it made me wince.

I realize this is in keeping with JetBlue's casual and quirky verve, but it strikes me as a little too "lite." It's a touch unprofessional, if not goofy. And while maybe I'm being too sensitive, it slyly reinforces the notion that the pilot's job -- and his professional identity along with it -- is no longer terribly important. As my regular readers are well aware, few things get under my skin more than myths about cockpit automation. First Officer Jamie? Well, whatever. After all, isn't the plane just "flying itself by computer"?

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First thing is the presence, right there on the departure concourse, of a Rite-Aid convenience store. Convenience stores, a rarity in terminals, are No. 3 on my vaunted list of "Fifteen Things No Airport Should Be Without." I've lamented how airports are becoming more and more indistinguishable from shopping malls, and that's mostly a bad thing. But if you're going to load up the concourse with retail chains, it's nice when one or two of them are actually useful.

The second thing is that Pittsburgh airport is one of the trial spots for so-called CrewPASS. Now under testing at a handful of airports, CrewPASS uses a database to cross-check an airline pilot's company and Federal Aviation Administration credentials, and will eventually allow all on-duty crew members to bypass Transportation Security Administration checkpoints nationwide.

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They were safety scissors, the kind you'd give to a child, about two-and-a-half inches long with rounded tips. (The photo at the top of this column shows an identical pair that I bought as a replacement.) Highly dangerous -- at least as the BKK security staff saw it. My airline pilot credentials meant nothing to them.

It's funny, but not really, when you stop to consider how easy it would be to fashion a sharp object -- certainly one deadlier than a pair of rounded-end scissors -- after boarding an airplane, from almost anything within your reach: a wine bottle, a first-class juice glass, a piece of plastic molding, and so on and so forth. Heck, if you're seated in first or business class, they give you a metal knife and fork.

But more to the point, pun intended, why do we still care so much about pointy objects?

When it came right down to it, the success of the Sept. 11 attacks had nothing -- nothing -- to do with box cutters. The hijackers could have used anything. They were not exploiting a weakness in luggage screening, but rather a weakness in our mind-set -- our understanding and expectations of what a hijacking was and how it would unfold. The hijackers weren't relying on weapons, they were relying on the element of surprise.

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The incident happened at around 10 p.m. Saturday as factory worker Eusebio D. Peraltalajara, 45, of Jersey City waltzed past the screeners on his way to a Dominican Republic-bound flight, the sources said...

As Peraltalajara's shoved it into the compartment, [flight attendant Fausto] Penaloda saw the boxcutters fall out of the bag, according to a police report.

He grabbed the boxcutters and alerted the captain and first officer.

Two TSA agents screened Peraltalajara's baggage. A spokeswoman for the TSA says they will be disciplined and undergo "remedial training."

Read the full New York Post story here

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The Transportation Security Administration -- otherwise known as the dude who took you to second before your flight to O’Hare -- is investigating alternatives to the controversial “full-body scan” that left many travelers feeling violated this holiday season.

The TSA designed the scan to improve airport security by more thoroughly vetting certain passengers. It can visualize a traveler’s physical contours and point out potential security hazards such as bombs and explosives. While the scan doesn’t show the subject’s face, many Americans still felt uncomfortable with the procedure. The TSA currently uses 500 of these full-body scanners across 78 airports in the U.S.

The new system, which the TSA is testing out at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas, will let travelers see everything TSA screeners see from the scan. More important, perhaps, it will render a more “generic” image. (Which, presumably, means less genitalia.)

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If the terrorist's aim is to provoke an overreaction, give the Russians credit for barely flinching.

Air traffic at Domodedovo airport was interrupted for only 20 minutes. According to eyewitness reports, airline crews and passengers in the adjacent arrival and departure lounges did not even realize that a bombing had taken place!

Think about that. Imagine for a minute that a similar attack had occurred at, say, Chicago's O'Hare or Los Angeles International, and what the American reaction would have been like. For hours after the blast, flights would have been halted and roadways blocked off. The entire terminal would have been closed for weeks. Tens of thousands of people would be canceling their airline reservations, and media coverage would be in absolute overdrive, fanning the flames for days.

And, of course, TSA and the rest of the Security Machine would be licking their chops in anticipation of all the new rules and restrictions to come.

Far-fetched? I really don't think so.

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Authorities don't yet know who carried out the attack, or why, though suspicions point to Chechen militants or other "local" Islamic separatists. Whoever the culprit was, one thing is clear: Air travel continues to be the target of choice for high-profile terrorist bombings. This has been the case for decades, and remains so.

And although airplanes themselves are historically the choicest target, attacks inside terminals are nothing new. In 1972, the Japanese Red Army killed 26 people in the arrivals lounge at Israel's Lod Airport (today Ben Gurion International). In 1985, the Abu Nidal group killed 20 in a pair of coordinated ticket counter assaults in Vienna and Rome. There have been smaller-scale assaults as well. In 2002, a gunman killed three people near the El Al Airlines ticket counter at Los Angeles International Airport.

Already experts are calling into question the security protocols at Domodedovo, one of three large airports serving the city of Moscow. In 2004, they point out, a pair of female suicide bombers boarded two jets at Domodedovo, killing all 90 people aboard both flights.

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This practice had been curtailed in the wake of the 2001 terror attacks. If I told you the curtailment was done as a cost-cutting measure, well, that would be embarrassing enough (a set of wings can't run more than a penny or two). Actually, it's worse than that. The real reason is almost too pathetic to be believed: Transportation Security Administration banned the distribution of toy wings because of the small metal pin affixed to the backside.

I am not making this up. And we are asked to imagine a terrorist attempting to hijack a plane with a set of plastic kiddie wings.

Granted, it's nice to see the wings again -- assuming there's a kid somewhere who is still made happy by such small gestures. Just as passengers can once again enjoy their first-class entrees with actual metal cutlery. Somebody, somewhere, was sane enough to let this happen.

But somebody else was daft enough to outlaw these things in the first place. And rest assured such silliness will happen again. Lesson being: Never, ever underestimate the American capacity for shameless overreaction. We see it on all scales, from the dropping of bombs to the prohibition of harmless trinkets for young children.

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I am not the pilot who found himself in hot water for posting scandalous security videos on YouTube.

The pilot, whose name has not been released, uploaded a series of clips taken at San Francisco International Airport. His intent was to expose the insane double standard of TSA's airport employee screening policies: Although pilots and flight attendants are required to pass through the same concourse checkpoints as passengers, many ground workers, including baggage handlers, caterers and cabin cleaners, are exempt from these checks. The YouTube segments, which have since been taken down, showed ground employees passing through a simple turnstile on their way to work. You can see some highlights from the videos in this television news report by News10 in Sacramento, Calif., where the pilot lives.

This has been TSA policy from the beginning. It is also something I've been writing about in my columns, on and off, for the past eight years. Finally the issue is getting some attention -- if not entirely for the right reasons. This should be a story about farcical security practices; instead, as the media has been playing it, it's the story of a renegade pilot.

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When a total stranger insists on feeling up my 1-year-old, though, that's when I lose my cool.

It happened at the end of a trying -- and tiring -- visit to my childhood home, which has, over time, become overstuffed with the relics of my brother's and my life as well as our parents' and their parents', too. For 10 days I prevented my toddling child from breaking any of a zillion pieces of crystal displayed on a glass cart in the dining room or choking on one of the various stray pills lurking in the woolly, hard-to-clean corners of the bathroom. My brother and I also managed to squeeze in the dreaded Conversation With One's Retirement-Age Parents that goes something like, "So where exactly are you planning to live when you can't, um, stay in the house anymore? And what are you planning to do with all this, erm, stuff?"

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