The Security Mentor

An airline employee had a hobby: he wrapped rubber bands into a rubber band ball. Unfortunately he put it in his carryon luggage. It showed up in a hand search.

It's unclear why the authorities were so afraid of a rubber band ball. Clearly they were petrified: even after he offered to surrender it to them, they still arested him and put him in jail.

UPDATE 11/22:

A woman was traveling with frozen homemade tomato sauce. The TSA screener, mindful of the complexities of the situation, called in a supervisor to help. Was frozen tomato sauce a dangerous liquid or not? The supervisor sagely observed "It's not a liquid right now, but it will be soon."

There's profiling, and there's lunacy. Six imams were removed from a plane and searched by bomb-sniffing dogs, were found not to be dangerous, but US Airways refused to sell them a ticket on another flight. If they were safe enough to get on another airline, why weren't they safe enough for US Airways? Well, it all traces back to the reason other passengers complained about them.

They were praying.

Those six were the exact sort of people we need on our side, to turn in potential terrorists and to call their flocks to personal virtue. I hope they are the forgiving sort.