Anticipating a nationwide grassroots surge of protests against naked body scanners and aggressive pat-downs, the TSA simply turned off its naked body scanners on Wednesday and let air travelers walk right through security checkpoints without being X-rayed or molested.

The TSA can't have it both ways. Either the naked body scanners are vital for air security and they need to be running 24/7 to keep everybody safe, or they're just another security con game being played out for the financial benefit of Chertoff and others who profit from the sale of such machines.

How can the TSA -- with a straight face -- say that naked body scanners are vital for air security but not on the busiest air travel day of the year?

A new Zogby poll indicates that 43% of the American public will seek alternatives to flying due to the TSA's aggressive pat-downs and naked body scanners. That's going to add up to a huge financial hit for the air travel industry in the months ahead. The TSA could end up destroying much of the air travel industry altogether!

Officer Gill met me at the patdown area—a glass-enclosed area to the left of the AIT. There were the usual chairs and mat with the paired footprints in the middle of them. I dutifully assumed the position as he introduced himself. I wondered if I was getting a corsage? Candy? Maybe just a little dirty talk first? Gill was a kid—he couldn’t have been more than twenty-three years old. He sheepishly and nervously admitted that he was new to the TSA and that I was his first patdown. Poor bastard, losing his virginity to a middle aged fat man in a kilt.

The enhanced patdown is very much like a consensual rape. The screener asks before touching each body part with the back of his hand. “I’m going to put my hand between your beltline and belly, is that okay?” Obviously, the only correct answer here was yes. I could have said no, but that meant that I’d be hitch hiking to Chicago…if I wasn’t arrested and charged with a fine. So Officer Gill starts with my backside, then chest and belly. After that, I stretched my arms out, and we finished the upper body. He then took a courageous breath and steeled his reserve, asking me to step forward with my left foot. This was it…

Gen X’ers, remember the old commercials for Milton Bradley’s Operation game? In the game, players take turns using metal tongs to remove plastic pieces from an electrified board with the shape of a man on it. If the tongs touch metal surrounding the piece’s cutout, the board makes a loud buzzing noise and the patient’s nose glows with a red light. “Don’t touch the sides!” warns one of the kids in the commercial. That’s the enhanced patdown, essentially.

With blue latex gloves on, the backside of Gill’s hand caressed my ankles and calf. The hand moved up my knee and vanished along my inner thigh, under the kilt...

Buddafingahs!

Had I a light bulb for a nose, it would have glowed.