Traveling abroad, security abreast

It's an end to the era of the "Mile-high Club" when the groping begins at sea level. \nSince the Transportation Security Administration modified its procedures for domestic and incoming international flights, airport screeners now give new meaning to the expression "hands-on." \nThis agency, a branch of the Department of Homeland Security, demands more thorough searches for explosives that could be hidden in women's bras. The initiative is a result of the summer bombings of two Russian jet liners, and because investigators believe the hijackers were women who hid nonmetallic bombs under their shirts, screeners now try to bust any future bust bombs. \nI can't help but wonder if a security screener can really feel the difference between a silicon breast and a plastic bomb. \nAt the Johannesburg airport in South Africa, I was one of the lucky gals who received a pat-down before boarding a flight to Atlanta. First, the men and women passengers were divided into two lines; then, a female screener asked me to remove my jacket and sweatshirt. She then proceeded to run her gloves between, underneath and over my chest. \nShe got a handful, and any leering men got an eyeful. I wasn't really embarrassed at the time. I just hoped she didn't notice all the other things I had stashed in there, like my zip-lock baggy of anthrax and my "How to hijack a commercial airliner" handbook. That would have been almost harder to explain than if I had an expression on my face suggesting I enjoyed the search.\nBut as the TSA attempts to tighten the cleavages in flight passenger screening, many women feel violated instead of protected by these pat-downs. According to a Sunday CBS report, 250 of these types of complaints were filed, and the fact that anyone would volunteer to wait in another line at an airport to fill out paperwork means the new policies are offending a lot of passengers. \nOn the other hand, there are women like The New York Times reader Susan Stark, who do, in fact, support airport breast fondling. In her letter to the editor, she states, "Did we have intelligence telling us that teenage girls and boys would become suicide bombers for Hamas? And what has recent history proved about the meaning of either age or gender to terrorists? In a sense, if 15-year-old martyrs can make a point, what about 80-year-old martyrs?" \nTouché, but isn't there something comical, as well as predictable, about a crackdown and feel-up of female passengers? Where is the logic when, according to the Center for American Progress, 95 percent of all cargo is unscreened and literally soars over American heads every day? \nIn all fairness, the department is working on new ways to improve cargo security.\nSecretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge wants more background checks of the freight handlers and any persons involved in the buying, sending and loading of cargo. However, according to The Associated Press, the TSA has yet to announce how it intends to implement those plans. \nMy question, then, to Tommy Boy is this: What if the nonmetallic bombs are not stowed in the bras of passengers or in the possession of freight handlers but are actually inside the cargo itself? \nI'll leave the experts to work out the kinks, but in the meantime, I'm sure there's a more practical and beneficial way to spend taxpayers' dollars. \nMaybe we could grope a pair of issues with one hand. If money is to be spent on more airport security screeners, the government ought to hire nurse practitioners while they're at it. They could administer breast exams, since many Americans aren't receiving them through the mediocrity of our current health care system anyway. \nThat way, not only would our planes be free of plastic bombs, but cancer-free as well.