Conservative radio host Laura Ingraham appeared on Fox & Friends on Tuesday to relate a disturbing scene she witnessed over the weekend. While preparing to travel in an airport, she saw a disabled veteran receiving an intrusive pat-down from Transportation Safety Administration agents. “I think we need to treat these men and women differently at TSA,” said Ingraham. “We need to give them a fast pass through the system and not as the Homeland Security Department said a few years ago, brand them as potential threats to the United States.”

Geraldo Rivera appeared on Fox & Friends on Friday where he described an intrusive inspection he had received from a Transportation Security Administration officer on a recent trip to Afghanistan. “I got manually raped by a guy,” said Rivera. “This guy, it seemed to me, was getting off on it.”

Neil Cavuto and guest former New York City Police Department detective Bo Dietl took Nevada Senator Harry Reid to task for his comments that TSA agents should smile and say hello.

“[Janet Napolitano] can instruct everybody that works at TSA to smile and say, ‘Hello,’ ” Reid told reporters Wednesday, “People who work for our government have to be able to do it with a smile on their face.” Cavuto called Reid’s suggestion, “creepy.”

Plenty of people have complained about the heightened TSA screenings in airports, but not many people have sung about it (although I did hit some pretty high notes during my last pat down). Enter Brian Sack and The B. S. of A. who, last night, performed an opera all about airport security. Sure, this may not have been exactly how Georges Bizet originally intended Carmen‘s “Torreador Song” to go, but he never had a full body scan.

Has TSA finally gone too far? A video from 2010 — that just recently surfaced — featuring a young child strapped to a wheelchair being pat down by TSA is taking social media by storm. The incident occurred in a Chicago-area airport, during a family trip to Disney World. The child’s father was enraged by the security check of his son. “I was told I could NOT touch him or come near him during this process. Instead we had to pretend this was ‘OK’ so he didn’t panic,” according to comments on the video purporting to be the child’s father.

On the show this morning, Whoopi Goldberg brought up a recent decision by the Transportation Security Administration to give traveling seniors over 75 a break when going through security, allowing them to leave their shoes on and be subjected to fewer pat downs in line.

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Jon Stewart had a few bones to pick with social conservatives today, and though he began attacking Chris Christie for vetoing the same-sex marriage bill, trying to explain to him that his take wasn’t much different from banning, say, fat people from getting married, but then moved on to the mandatory transvaginal ultrasounds proposed for women who want abortions in Virginia. His best guess at a comparison? Like something out of A Clockwork Orange.

Last week, Senator Rand Paul was detained by the TSA and subjected to a pat-down. The White House disputed this chain of events, but the senator stood by it. Ron Paul stuck up for his son in the coming days, and on CNN’s State of the Union, Paul went down a list of problems he has with the TSA and why it should be abolished. Candy Crowley asked Paul what he would put in the place of the TSA. Paul answered that it could easily be handled by the private sector, and insisted the government has no place being involved in it.

Kentucky senator Rand Paul is now speaking out about his experience yesterday with the TSA at a Tennessee airport. Early reports — kicking off with a Tweet from his communications director — said the Senator had been detained by TSA officials after setting off an alarm during his full-body scan. He was not permitted to re-enter the machine, but was asked to undergo a pat-down — something which Senator Paul has been very vocally against.

During a White House press briefing, White House press secretary Jay Carney said that the Obama Administration stood beside the Transportation Security Administration in the wake of Kentucky Senator Rand Paul being detained at the Nashville International Airport.

Uh oh. This morning, Sen. Rand Paul‘s communications director shared via Twitter that the Kentucky Senator has been detained by the TSA at a Nashville airport.
Sen. Paul apparently set off the alarm on the airport’s full-body scanner, despite insisting that it was a glitch and that he was not carrying anything that would have set it off. TSA agents would not allow Paul to walk back through the body scanner and, according to his staffer, demanded that the Senator undergo a full body pat-down.

Salon’s Steve Kornacki went on The Rachel Maddow Show Thursday night and talked about a photo his site had stumbled across. Kornacki thought he saw Mitt Romney getting his shoes shined on a tarmac when, in fact, it was a TSA screening, as NPR’s Frank James pointed out. During the broadcast, Kornacki was caught up in pareidolia, and wildly described an invented-narrative of what the photo represented.

Rebecca Hains was only trying to make her flight from Las Vegas a lil’ sweeter when she was stopped by a TSA agent and promptly informed that the frosting on her cupcake was too “gel-like” and, as such, posed a possible security threat. You know, just like all those dastardly gel-filled snowglobes you’re not allowed to bring in your carry-on bags.

ot a lot of people are fans of the TSA security procedures, and if you are one of those people, this story is probably not going to assuage your concerns. The agency is now actively denying claims being made by an elderly woman that she was brought aside by TSA agents and strip-searched as part of her screening process. Lenore Zimmerman, a Long Island resident, was traveling to Fort Lauderdale and requested that she not be subjected to the invasive screening process out of concerns it would react negatively with her defibrillator.

An infuriated Jesse Ventura took the podium at a press conference in Minnesota yesterday after being told that the court in which he filed a lawsuit against the TSA for what he considers an unreasonable search and seizure process did not have jurisdiction over the matter. Railing against the “Fascist States of America,” the former Minnesota governor insisted he will “never stand for a national anthem again” and vowed to apply for Mexican citizenship. Ventura also noted he was “thinking about” running for President.

Today on The View! Which co-host reveals that she travels with her vibrator in her MAKEUP bag, so as to not draw unwanted attention from the TSA attendant? Which co-host reveals that she eschews the use of a vibrator, opting instead for “this man with equipment.” Finally, which morning talk show loves to share personal sex habits on live television, creating video segments for websites to aggregate in hopes that they will drive traffic?

TSA agents in Atlanta recently stopped Dallas hairdresser Isis Brantley at the airport specifically to check her hair for explosives. I was going to make a joke about her hairstyle being “the bomb,” but, you know what? I won’t subject you all to that.

Oops.

Brantley, who has styled the likes of singer Erykah Badu (who happens to have some pretty impressive hair of her own), was taken aback by the officers’ request to check her hair.

On Fox News Sunday today, Chris Wallace suggested to former Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff that airport screenings should be less universal and more targeted because “there are obviously people who are greater threats and people who are lesser threats.”

Remember the story of the bladder cancer survivor who said he was “humiliated” by an intrusive airport search at the hands of a TSA agent–a search that was done in such a way as to rupture the man’s urostomy bag at the TSA checkpoint? Thomas Sawyer described the incident–and the way it made him feel–last fall, arguing that the TSA needs to focus on showing travelers respect when they have special issues that might require a little discretion (and, as he correctly pointed out, all travelers have the right to ask for (demand) that a hand search be done in private). In the aftermath of his nightmarish experience, Sawyer met with TSA chiefs in Washington, got a bunch of heartfelt apologies, and shared his thoughts. And then last week it happened all over again.

It’s unclear what her motive was, but 61-year-old Yukari Mihamae was arrested in a Phoenix airport for allegedly grabbing the breast of a female TSA agent. It is reported that Mihamae squeezed and twisted the agent’s breast with both hands.

Yesterday, we brought irrefutable proof that travelling sucks for everyone with the sad story of a United States Governor forced to sleep on an airport floor just because the rain decided to get all icy for a bit. Yes, our country’s leaders also have to face the indignities of air travel, be they delays, long lines, or stores trying to sell bottled water for $5. To further prove this thesis, we give you former Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld who had to undergo one of those annoying TSA pat-downs everyone’s so worked up about.

The federal organization in charge of security at airports has heard plenty of criticisms from both sides of the aisle for their intrusive and often seemingly ineffective search measures on travelers. But the “racism” charge is one seem with less frequency, especially as children and the elderly complain that they are being searched needlessly to avoid racial profiling. Laura Adiele‘s story is precisely the opposite of that: she told MSNBC’s Richard Lui this week that her hair was inspected for being “poofy” amid laughter by TSA agents.

Late last Fall, the nearly bipartisan outrage directed towards the TSA and their new policy of aggressive pat-downs was at a fever pitch, with various and absurd examples young kids getting searched, even spawning a “don’t touch my junk” meme. But perhaps because the holiday travel season had passed, the tide of outrageous reports ebbed, and so did the anger towards the TSA. Well, if you are miss getting angry over outrageous and overenthusiastic TSA agents you are in luck! Be prepared for righteous indignation all over again, with the following report of a 95 year-old woman forced to remove her adult diaper.

Remember that Congressman who was angry that airport security randomly patted down a grandma and a child, but let a man in “Arabian dress” pass through? Well Republican Congressman Paul Broun is back, this time on Fox News, and he’s not retreating from his demand that the TSA start focusing on the “real” terrorists, which apparently might include anyone in “Arabian attire.”