A 59-year-old rape survivor with a pacemaker refused a groping by TSA agents at Austin Bergstrom airport, and was subsequently arrested, pushed to the floor, dragged, and banned from flying from the airport. While the TSA’s pornoscanners weren’t involved in this incident, it shows the newfound prevalence of TSA’s aggressive new groping strategy for anyone who doesn’t clear the first round of security checks.

Know your rights this travel season - download our “Know Your Rights” flier, and visit our TSA coverage page for more on pornoscanners and groping.

As we enter the busiest travel season of the year, there is no question that the TSA will be stepping up security measures across the country — including the use of the infamous ‘porno scanners’ and ‘enhanced’ patdowns.

Many of you will be enduring security checkpoints at airports over the next couple of weeks, so we wanted to remind everyone to download a free copy of our Know Your Passenger Rights flier before you travel.

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.

Someone has the TSA by the short hairs. . . .

Sign the petition to investigate the TSA • Download our “Know Your Rights with TSA” flier before you fly

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?