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Don't make any comments about a rifle being in your wallet.
Eighty-year-old Fred Hubbell, tired and cranky after facing a gantlet of searches at Bradley International Airport, made a sarcastic remark about a rifle that he quickly came to regret. Suddenly he found himself in handcuffs -- with a firsthand sense of what the Transportation Security Administration means by "zero tolerance."
Is this what it means to make air travel safer? To just act like bullies with the weight of the state behind them?
Near the end of the second full-scale pat-down, he saw the screener poking into his wallet. He said, "You better look at it real good; there may be a rifle in there." It was a new experience for the retired engineer and World War II veteran. He had a mug shot taken. He was fingerprinted. He spent about 20 minutes in a locked holding cell, as his worried wife waited outside.

posted by Hal 7:02 PM