THE UNSPOKEN ISSUE – AT 8:29 A.M. ET:  As readers know, there's a big to-do over invasive airport screening, and appropriately so.  There have been too many stories of inappropriate or intimidating behavior by TSA personnel.

But please note which part of this story isn't being covered.  Who, precisely, are these people hired by the TSA?  What are their qualifications?  What is their training?  How many, if any, have criminal backgrounds? 

And why won't the mainstream media ask any questions about the people involved in these screenings?  Are reporters afraid of what they might find?  Or are they totally intimidated by a journalistic and academic culture that holds that people at a certain level are always victims?

Other countries do not seem to have run into these problems of intimacy.  And now that enemies know exactly what full-body scanners will reveal, and not reveal, they will adjust accordingly, making the scanners somewhat less useful. 

Of course we want to be careful.  Under certain circumstances, even patting down young children is appropriate because we know that our enemy would not hesitate to strap a bomb to a child. But I must believe that part of our problem is an obsessive political correctness.  We're subjecting everyone to humiliating procedures because we won't do what Israel and other nations do routinely – target the terrorist and not the weapon.  Reasonable profiling, which, despite denials, law enforcement does every day, would ease the current situation substantially.  But it will not be done.

If anyone ever tells you that political correctness is just a minor nuisance, think again.

November 19, 2010