US Airport security is "theatre"

How Israelis Secure Airports -Michael J. Totten

While air travel terrorists have yet to use the same weapon twice, U.S. Transportation Security Administration agents look for the item the most recent terrorist used. Security officials should pay less attention to objects, and more attention to people. The Israelis do.

Israelis don't use security theater to make passengers feel like they're safe. They use real security measures to ensure that travelers actually are safe.

Even when suicide bombers exploded themselves almost daily in Israeli cities, not a single one managed to get through that airport.
(New York Post)
*

Don't touch my junk -Charles Krauthammer

[T]he 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. We will swallow hard and pretend airline attackers are randomly distributed in the population.
[Washington Post]
*

Note: The partisan video above takes a low shot at "liberals," but the point is too valuable not to post.