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"Flying commercially is the most unpleasant experience in life, with the chance of a felony arrest or death as an added fillip. I flew 150,000 miles a year prior to 9-11. I don't fly commercially any more. If I can't fly private aviation, take a train or drive, I don't go there.
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Utter nonsense. Flying commercially can't hold a candle to being in an auto accident, being mugged, being raped, or an entire list of things that are far worse experiences. I fly a heckuva lot, and continue to do so. I've had my share of being pulled aside for screening in recent months. I find it mildly annoying, and that's it. It takes some extra time, but I have always allowed extra time at airports.

As for the wife in question being touched...that should have been done behind a screen...most definitely. I had one security guy run the back of his hand across the front of my pants, after he told me he was going to do it. I see little difference there, frankly. No doubt the woman was felt up by another woman. No big deal, even if mildly annoying.

To blow these checks out of proportion and claim they are the worst experience in life is to be ridiculous. Try catching viral encephalitis on a cross-country road trip and spending two weeks in a hospital nowhere near where you live. That happened to me. It was far, far worse than being screened at an airport.

Exaggeration does nothing to solve the problem. We need to protest unwarranted intrusions into our lives, but we need not exaggerate their significance.

Sure, assuming that the house is being custom-built for you. What about spec houses? PEX may be the best thing since sliced bread...I don't know, frankly, having been out of the business for some years. But...it also may not be. I remember when the same arguments were used for CVPC for hot water piping. Turned out that that stuff was crap, and even possibly toxic. Try replumbing a house if you want some real expensive hassles. If I were buying a spec house, I would not buy it if it had any plastic pipe in the walls. I'd ask, then walk if it was there. Copper will last a lifetime. Should the government be telling us what goes into our houses? Well, it's been doing that for many decades. Building codes are just that. No doubt there are things in there that shouldn't be, but the idea is good. Frankly, you have no idea what's inside the walls of a spec house. You can't see inside the walls. Without properly-enforced building codes, you would not believe what would pass for construction standards. The government has a role in this.

Shoot...sorry. I clicked the Reply "above" the message, instead of below. Wrong topic.

Utter nonsense. Flying commercially can't hold a candle to being in an auto accident, being mugged, being raped, or an entire list of things that are far worse experiences. I fly a heckuva lot, and continue to do so. I've had my share of being pulled aside for screening in recent months. I find it mildly annoying, and that's it. It takes some extra time, but I have always allowed extra time at airports.

Apparently freedom is a foreign concept to people like you. You only understand safety.

I would rather die in the worst Osama Bin Laden has to throw at us than give another man authority to stick his hands down my pants in some absurd parody of security.

You people who meekly continue to submit to this garbage when you don't have to really need to think about what you are doing.

Right now this can be stopped easily. Just stop flying. If someone asks, tell them you will fly again when sanity returns to airport security.

Right now every gestapo wannabe is proposing his wet dream for "security" and the cowards are eating it up.

I suppose that if you are docile enough by nature that being treated as if you were an inmate in a maximum security lockup for the privilage of getting on one of those flying cattle cars doesn't bother you....

These passenger inspections contribute almost nothing to actual security. Cargo, mantanince and catering staff enter aircraft with only a badge and a set of coveralls for id and no individual searches. The purpose of this nonsense is three fold. First the civil "servants" want to be seen to be doing something. The monkey motion makes the more thoughtless and ignorant willing to get on the "safe" airplane. And, as a friend of mine suggested, our masters now know that Americans will jump through even the stupidest of hoops if they are told to.

I enjoyed your post and I admire your equanamity, but I detest the entire experience, necessary though it may be.

Yeah, whatever. You go right ahead, comrade, and submit to these morons. Me, I'm driving. Or, I think I will buy my own airplane and learn to fly. I've had enough of this nonsense.

I guess you fall into the "if you're not guilty, you have nothing to worry about" crowd.

"As for the wife in question being touched...that should have been done behind a screen...most definitely. "

You have got to be kidding. Why should she have been searched to begin with? I see the people they decide to search...grandmothers, children, women with large breasts. The only people who are not searched are those who actually look like terrorists. Our security is pathetic and dangerous.