Don't Fly During Ramadan

I pat them down, and search their luggage. If I don't find a bomb, I let them go. It should take 3-5 minutes, tops. What I don't do is detain them for hours, grille them over and over again, and deny them food and water during the detainment.

but at the same time they need to be persistent enough to deal with the attempts of guilty parties to conceal the truth.

It doesn't even matter what they say, they either are or aren't carrying a bomb. That can be determined through physical inspection. Persistence doesn't enter into it.

Minimal suspicions? A young male flying alone who refuses the scanner and sets of the explosives detector?

Yes, he absolutely should have been cooperative and answered their questions after that. I always refuse the scanner, but I don't complain afterward that I have to answer questions and get a "firm" pat down (there is nothing "firm" about them, btw, they are overly careful and respectful if anything).

And if I ever set off the explosive detector, my first reaction wouldn't be how unfair it was that "harried" employees were "rudely" explaining that my options were leaving or a private pat down. That would seem utterly reasonable to me.

Maybe not as humiliating as what this poor guy had to go through, but my point is, governments can act incredibly irrationally in response to security threats. I realize the need to keep its citizens secure - but when they claim they don't want the terrorists to win, one has to wonder if they haven't, in fact, actually won already by slowly decimating our democracy.

Flying from France back into the states through customs in Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport was the worst experience I've had with TSA.

First of all, a woman who was supposed to be managing the maze of lines tried to take my passport from my hand when I wasn't looking. I held it tight as she attempted to pull it away from me and she was clearly mad, yelling "I'm trying to help you!"

In line for the body scanner I was pulled aside for one of the random pat-downs. I didn't think about it at the time but it could've easily been the TSA employee who tried to take my passport form my hand.

The employee who was supposed to be giving the pat down was obviously reluctant to do it and asked me 4 times if I was okay with being touched inappropriately. I agreed 4 times, it took him 10 minutes to actually start giving me the pat down.

While I was being patted down another employee asked me if the bag that went through the scanner was mine. I said yes.

He began removing my clothes and charge cords and a few items I had purchased in France, and spreading them out on a table away from me.

I told him to stop and he asked why. I said I didn't want him to go through my belonging while I wasn't there and he didn't respond, but stepped away from the table.

After the pat down I re-assembled my luggage and continued boarding the plane. Just as I was about to leave security the officer came and put his hand on my shoulder and said that I "wasn't done with the security procedure yet."

He said I had to stand back from the table while he removed the items from my bag which I had just put back in. Apparently he removed my laptop and set it in one of the item-scanner bins at the end of the conveyor belt. He took 15 minutes to go through my bag, put everything back inside and sent me on my way.

Just before boarding I noticed my laptop had not been placed back in my bag. I darted back to security where the previous staff had been replaced by all-new employees. I spent the next 30 minutes trying to get them to dig through bins to find my MacBook, which was buried in a stack on the other side of security.

I made my flight by minutes.