Jeffrey Goldberg detailed his mother in law’s recent travel experience. She heard the seven words nobody wants to hear at a TSA airport checkpoint: “There’s an anomaly in the crotch area.” Not only did she hear those seven words, so did everybody around her.

She entered the machine and struck the humiliating pose one is forced to strike — hands up, as in an armed robbery — and then walked out, when she was asked by a TSA agent, in a voice loud enough for several people to hear, “Are you wearing a sanitary napkin?”

Remember, she’s 79.

My mother-in-law answered, “No. Why do you ask?”

The TSA agent responded: “Well, are you wearing anything else down there?”

Yes, “down there.”

She said no, at which point, the friend with whom she was traveling, also a not-young volunteer library advocate, came over and asked if there was a problem.

The TSA agent said, again, in full voice, “There’s an anomaly in the crotch area.”

Ugh. Read the whole thing, as it turns out, things could have been worse for Mr. Goldberg’s mother in law.

This is what it’s come to. We have more to fear from our own government than the people they’re supposed to be protecting us from.

Via Hot Air

Update: Linked by Conservative Hideout and Scared Monkeys – thanks!

Update: Linked by Randon Neural Synapses – thanks!