text: Ah, the airport, where modern folk heroes are made. The airport, where that inspired flight attendant did what everyone who's ever been in the spam-in-a-can crush of a flying aluminum tube - where we collectively pretend that a clutch of peanuts is a meal and a seat cushion is a "flotation device" - has always dreamed of doing: pull the lever, blow the door, explode the chute, grab a beer, slide to the tarmac and walk through the gates to the sanity that lies beyond. Not since Rick and Louis disappeared into the Casablanca fog headed for the Free French garrison in Brazzaville has a stroll on the tarmac thrilled so many. 
   
   Who cares that the crazed steward got arrested, pleaded guilty to sundry charges, and probably was a rude, unpleasant SOB to begin with? Bonnie and Clyde were psychopaths, yet what child of the '60s did not fall in love with Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty? 
   
   And now three months later, the newest airport hero arrives. His genius was not innovation in getting out, but deconstructing the entire process of getting in. John Tyner, cleverly armed with an iPhone to give YouTube immortality to the encounter, took exception to the TSA guard about to give him the benefit of Homeland Security's newest brainstorm - the upgraded, full-palm, up the groin, all-body pat-down. In a stroke, the young man ascended to myth, or at least the next edition of Bartlett's, warning the agent not to "touch my junk." 
   
   Not quite the 18th-century elegance of "Don't Tread on Me," but the age of Twitter has a different cadence from the age of the musket. What the modern battle cry lacks in archaic charm, it makes up for in full-body syllabic punch. 
   
   Don't touch my junk is the anthem of the modern man, the Tea Party patriot, the late-life libertarian, the midterm election voter. Don't touch my junk, Obamacare - get out of my doctor's examining room, I'm wearing a paper-thin gown slit down the back. Don't touch my junk, Google - Street View is cool, but get off my street. Don't touch my junk, you airport security goon - my package belongs to no one but me, and do you really think I'm a Nigerian nut job preparing for my 72-virgin orgy by blowing my johnson to kingdom come? 
   
   In "Up in the Air," that ironic take on the cramped freneticism of airport life, George Clooney explains why he always follows Asians in the security line: 
   
   "They pack light, travel efficiently, and they got a thing for slip-on shoes, God love 'em." 
   
   "That's racist!" 
   
   "I'm like my mother. I stereotype. It's faster." 
   
   That riff is a crowd-pleaser because everyone knows that the entire apparatus of the security line is a national homage to political correctness. Nowhere do more people meekly acquiesce to more useless inconvenience and needless indignity for less purpose. Wizened seniors strain to untie their shoes; beltless salesmen struggle comically to hold up their pants; 3-year-olds scream while being searched insanely for explosives - when everyone, everyone, knows that none of these people is a threat to anyone. 
   
   The ultimate idiocy is the full-body screening of the pilot. The pilot doesn't need a bomb or box cutter to bring down a plane. All he has to do is drive it into the water, like the EgyptAir pilot who crashed his plane off Nantucket while intoning "I rely on God," killing all on board. 
   
   But we must not bring that up. We pretend that we go through this nonsense as a small price paid to ensure the safety of air travel. Rubbish. This has nothing to do with safety - 95 percent of these inspections, searches, shoe removals and pat-downs are ridiculously unnecessary. The only reason we continue to do this is that people are too cowed to even question the absurd taboo against profiling - when the profile of the airline attacker is narrow, concrete, uniquely definable and universally known. So instead of seeking out terrorists, we seek out tubes of gel in stroller pouches. 
   
   The junk man's revolt marks the point at which a docile public declares that it will tolerate only so much idiocy. Metal detector? Back-of-the-hand pat? Okay. We will swallow hard and pretend airline attackers are randomly distributed in the population. 
   
   But now you insist on a full-body scan, a fairly accurate representation of my naked image to be viewed by a total stranger? Or alternatively, the full-body pat-down, which, as the junk man correctly noted, would be sexual assault if performed by anyone else? 
   
   This time you have gone too far, Big Bro'. The sleeping giant awakes. Take my shoes, remove my belt, waste my time and try my patience. But don't touch my junk. 
   
   letters@charleskrauthammer.com ||||| Airport scanners, pat-downs and tens of thousands of new federal employees have made searches too intrusive but haven’t made us any safer. Time to fix this broken system. By Robert W. Poole, Jr. 
   
   “If you touch my junk,” John Tyner told a TSA agent who was frisking him, “I’ll have you arrested.” 
   
   Welcome to the security theater of the United States. 
   
   In its rush to improve airport security following the tragic 9/11 attacks, Congress created a monster. President George W. Bush and Congress federalized airport security in 2001, forming a massive new government bureaucracy that has now reportedly grown to more than 67,000 employees. 
   
   These days, those thousands of Transportation Security Administration employees are conducting invasive searches, making 3-year-olds scream while they are patted down for weapons, frisking nuns, looking at naked images of your body, and forcing you to throw away perfectly good liquids. 
   
   And yet our airports are still far from secure. As USA Today reported in 2008, “A November GAO report said investigators repeatedly smuggled liquid explosives and detonators past airport checkpoints in 2006. An internal TSA report said screeners in Los Angeles and Chicago airports missed fake bombs on agents in more than 60 percent of tests in 2006.” 
   
   And the privacy-invading new scanners being installed at airports won’t automatically fix that. A government report found it “remains unclear” if the scanners now being installed would have caught the underwear bomber last Christmas. 
   
   People are outraged at the TSA’s aggressive pat-downs and privacy-invading scans. Yet the TSA continues to foolishly pretend that everyone boarding a plane is equally likely to try to blow it up. This equal-risk assumption has caused knee-jerk reactions to the shoe-bomber (take your shoes off), the liquids bombers (small toiletries, no liquids through the checkpoint), the underwear bomber (body scans and pat-downs). Heaven help us the first time a would-be suicide bomber is caught with explosives hidden in a body cavity. By the TSA’s logic, they would have to make body-cavity searches routine for all of us. 
   
   The TSA continues to foolishly pretend that everyone boarding a plane is equally likely to try to blow it up. (David Goldman / AP Photo) 
   
   This nonsense needs to stop, and that means shifting to a risk-based screening system. Passengers should be divided into three risk groups and dealt with accordingly: high, medium, and low-risk. 
   
   Low-risk travelers would be those about whom solid information exists that they are not a threat to aviation. Obvious candidates include cockpit crews and those already holding government security clearances. By the same token, frequent air travelers should be able to volunteer for trusted traveler aviation-security clearances by submitting to a rigorous background check. If you pass, you get a biometric ID card, present it at the airport proving you’re the person who was already cleared and go through minimal security. 
   
   In its rush to improve airport security following the tragic 9/11 attacks, Congress created a monster. 
   
   High-risk travelers would be those on any of the various watch lists maintained by the Department of Homeland Security—not just the current TSA no-fly and selectee lists. Yes, this would be a form of “profiling,” but not based on race, ethnicity, or religion. Rather, it would be evidence-based profiling, using intelligence information and previous travel history information. 
   
   • Conor Friedersdorf: Who Pats Down Your Privates?Everyone else would be considered medium-risk. They would face old-fashioned checkpoint screening, fully clothed (including shoes and jackets)—walk-through metal detectors and two-dimensional X-ray of their carry-ons. And as with the low-risk people, a small fraction would be randomly selected for secondary screening.
target: – The "if-you-touch-my-junk" guy is gaining traction as the poster boy of the anti-body-scan movement. Charles Krauthammer takes up his cause today, declaring that "don't touch my junk" is, in fact, "the anthem of the modern man, the Tea Party patriot, the late-life libertarian, the midterm election voter." It applies to everything from Obamacare to Google Street View. Maybe not as elegant as Don't Tread on Me, but perfect in the "age of Twitter," he writes in the Washington Post. More to the point, it highlights the "idiocy" of the TSA strategy. Until we get over this "absurd taboo against profiling"—especially "when the profile of the airline attacker is narrow, concrete, uniquely definable and universally known"—we're all going to suffer. That includes pilots, who wouldn't exactly need a box cutter to take down a plane, he points out. Robert Poole in the Daily Beast also cites the touch-my-junk guy (real name John Tyner) in calling for an end to the scanner "nonsense." His solution involves "evidence-based profiling" that divides travelers into high, medium, and low risks. Click here for details on that.