Ain't No Security 'Tall

I'm late to the shut-down of Newark airport story, but it's ... troubling, to say the least. The bad news is, you have to take off your shoes and pass nekkid through airport security. The good news is, actually, you don't, if you just time it right. Take it away, Mr. Steyn:

He didn't have to try anything clever. He just waited until crack TSA national security operative Ruben Hernandez turned his back:

The stunning breach was missed by TSA guard Ruben Hernandez, who left his post, but was called a "model employee" by a union official.

I'll bet. There are a lot of those at Newark:

A bystander waiting for an arriving passenger noticed the breach and told the guard. TSA officials then discovered that surveillance cameras at the security checkpoint had not recorded the breach.

Really? So then what?

That's right – they weren't even recording, sources said, and needed a reboot, which the agency apparently didn't ask for. That set off a chain reaction of even more missteps that caused needless chaos and inconvenience for several thousand hapless passengers.

With the cameras inoperable, the TSA tried to get a second set of surveillance video from Continental Airlines. But the TSA apparently didn't know the correct telephone number and the specific procedures to get the footage.

Shutting down the airport, wasting thousands of people's time by pointlessly rescreening them, treating them as animals in pens without food or drink or bathroom breaks for hours on end, causing them to miss their flights and screwing up their lives... none of that is Mr Jiang's fault but that of the money-no-object TSA that imposes stupid petty rules on everybody else but doesn't even follow its own.