The new expensive backscatter x-ray scanners installed at airports are fairly worthless because they can’t stop a determined individual from smuggling contraband onto an airplane in a body cavity. But that’s not all; it appears the scanners can easily be defeated by a kitchen rolling pin and a roll of tape.

Don’t touch my what now? In the week since the biggest travel day of the year, the public attention paid to the TSA’s porno scanners and aggressive groping has plummeted.

The basic story line appears to be that since airports functioned without hiccups from porno scanner opt-outs during the Thanksgiving travel season, the media “overblew” a “false alarm” story. Yet we’re no longer talking about porno scanners and groping because the Thanksgiving holiday passed without incident; no major delays, and even more importantly, no new “don’t touch my junk” videos or similar incidents.

But it was almost too quiet over Thanksgiving…

The driving force behind Al-Qaeda and related groups acts of terrorism is not a profound hatred of air travel. They don’t deeply despise the Boeing 747. They aren’t driven by the belief that the ability to travel from New York to San Francisco in under 7 hours is affront to God.

They hate America and want to perform acts of terrorism to terrorize the country, regardless the venue. Even if we could magically make domestic air travel 100 percent terrorist proof, something that would not be possible without full body CAT scans or colonoscopies to check every body cavities, it would not make us any safer in the aggregate.

Ignoring the anger and demonizing the angry does not service liberty or security, and it doesn’t do much for the causes of progressives or the Democratic Party, either.

“The dumbest part: they did two pat-down demonstrations – male on male, and female on female,” the House staffer said. And they used a young female TSA volunteer “and in front of a room of 200 people, they touched her breasts and her buttocks. People were averting their eyes. The TSA was trying to demonstrate ‘this is not so bad,’ but it made people so uncomfortable to watch, that people were averting their eyes.”

“They shot themselves in the foot,” the staffer continued.

So let me get this straight. John Pistole doesn’t want to detail what the patdown procedures are for fear the terrorists will exploit them, as said when he testified before the Science and Transportation Committee (video right). Then he didn’t tell the public that they were implementing the procedures because he didn’t want the terrorists to know.

And now in order to discourage “opt-out” day, they give advanced notice that a handful of people can easily bring every major airport in the country to a grinding halt with very little effort.

Genius.

Frankly, I think expecting 170,000 people a week to have their genitalia groped each week by government workers to be unreasonable. But the numbers may be far, far higher.

Aside from being too little too late, consider what this situation says about TSA’s John Pistole’s relationship with the citizens who employ him. Regardless of his “risk based” assessment that he had to keep secrets from the terrorists, don’t Americans have the right to know what will happen to them at the airport?

The idea of an Opt-Out day has been picking up steam, and many airline passengers will be refusing to submit to the TSA’s whole body imaging scanners on Wednesday, November 24. But in the wake of conflicting messages coming out of the TSA, travelers are going to be confused about what to expect at TSA security checkpoints. So FDL has put together a handy flier about the scanners and the “enhanced” patdown procedures, which explains your risks and rights in the airport:

Download: Know Your Passenger Rights (PDF)

I don’t mean to be vulgar, but as the TSA ratchets up the security theater to new and literally obscene heights, I can’t help thinking about the butt. I’m specifically referring to the ability to smuggle weapons past these security measures using the anal cavity and/or the GI tract.