Oh yeah, this really makes me want to climb on an airplane (not!)

Yesterday, this news article from USA Today was listed on my Google News homepage.

http://blogs.usatoday.com/ondeadline/2007/07/tsa-to-lift-ban.html

It says that come August the TSA is lifting the restrictions from taking lighters on airplanes. Now, that just makes me crazy.

I have to take off my flip-flops* and have them x-rayed as I go through security at the airport. Last time I checked, I haven't seen any reports of flip-flops being used as weapons.

However, they are going to allow lighters on airplanes when, by all accounts, Richard Reid - the shoe bomber - would have succeeded in blowing up the airplane he was on if he had a lighter and hadn't used a match. It was the sulphur in the match that alerted fellow passengers around him to his actions. Those passengers then subdued and restrained him. A lighter wouldn't have attracted any attention and it would have been an awful tragedy.

The TSA's logic for the decision is that because Richard Reid could also have used a small battery to detonate the explosives in his shoes, the ban on lighters is "security theater." By that same logic, we should skip all aviation security screenings because the 9/11 terrorists could have use a Ryder truck to blow up the twin towers, so any security that stops them from using airplanes to blow up buildings is "security theater" as well.

I flat-out don't get it. I don't.

*All of you who know John Eberle's Rules of Proper Dress for Airplane Travel know that I don't wear flip-flops on airplanes. I only wear laced-up shoes and cotton clothing. That way, if the airplane crashes, my shoes won't go flying off my feet and my clothing won't melt to my body. Then, when I climb over the seats, which I've counted both in front of me and behind me, to the exit row to get out of the airplane after it fills with smoke, I won't have to run through broken glass and burning fuel barefooted.