Last weekend I returned to my alma mater for homecoming. (GO BADGERS!) Leaving the Madison, Wisconsin Airport on Sunday, my husband and I were treated to the Transportation Security Agency's (TSA) Tony Award-worthy performance in "feel safe" security theater.
First, TSA had reserved one of the two security checkpoints for TSA Pre-Checked passengers only. (Pre-Check is the program where you give TSA more of your private information - like your fingerprints - and you get to keep your shoes on.) At a small regional airport in a college town on homecoming weekend, eliminating a checkpoint created quite a mess at the remaining checkpoint, with dozens of people missing flights. The mess was messier because the remaining checkpoint had one naked body scanner and one metal detector, but TSA didn't bother letting people go through the metal detector until the airlines started calling 20-some names of passengers who were late to board.
But what really scared TSA: It was my first weekend away from our new baby, and I had with me a cooler full of pumped breast milk.
After incidents like the one where my colleague and Kossack Jesselyn Radack was asked to taste her breast milk (!!!!), TSA actually developed a policy, which says that breast milk is medically necessary and therefore exempt from the "no liquids" rule.
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