Sometimes you run across a story...

...in the paper that requires no smart aleck remarks whatsoever -- it can't be improved upon. Just look at that picture, for example. In an article in the Times today, "Pat-Downs at Airports Prompt Complaints":

In the three weeks since the Transportation Security Administration began more aggressive pat-downs of passengers at airport security checkpoints, traveler complaints have poured in.

Some offer graphic accounts of genital contact, others tell of agents gawking or making inappropriate comments, and many express a general sense of powerlessness and humiliation. In general passengers are saying they are surprised by the intimacy of a physical search usually reserved for police encounters.

“I didn’t really expect her to touch my vagina through my pants,” said Kaya McLaren, an elementary schoolteacher from Cle Elum, Wash., who was patted down at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport last Saturday because the body scanner detected a tissue and a hair band in her pocket.
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According to information the T.S.A. has shared or published, the airport pat-downs are supposed to be conducted by officers the same sex as the traveler, and passengers can request a private screening and have a traveling companion present during the search. Agents are not permitted to look inside passengers’ underwear or reach inside a skirt...

Rather than waiting for a court decision or the T.S.A. to rethink its procedures, some local officials — and passengers — are taking matters into their own hands. [Some people] are calling for passenger protests at security checkpoints next Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving, while other disgruntled travelers are suggesting that men wear kilts or that the boldest passengers strip down to their underwear before entering the security line.