In the wake of a proposed bill to ban TSA patdowns in Texas failing to get off the ground, Eric Bolling revisited the airline security issue on Follow the Money. After the obligatory clip/interview with “Don’t touch my junk” guy John Tyner, Bolling held a panel discussion on the potential effectiveness of profiling – and even got a liberal guest to agree (with conditions) that some forms of profiling might be worth exploring.

Republican Congressman Paul Broun serves on the Homeland Security Committee and apparently attends the Juan Williams school of tell us your honest thoughts regarding what you feel when you see Arab-looking individuals in the airport. Broun is upset political correctness demands that we give grandma a pat down at the airport, but don’t do the same for anyone who looks like they might really want to harm America.

The pastor who took pictures over the weekend of TSA agents patting down an eight-month old baby says he’s “never seen anything quite that bad,” said Jacob Jester, who pulled out his phone and take pictures. He sent the pictures to Twitter, setting off a viral firestorm. “So far, I’ve had 143,000 hits on (the photo). Kansas City airport tweeted me, and they said it would be up to TSA to offer a response. I haven’t heard anything from TSA, and I don’t expect to.”

Miss USA 2003 Susie Castillo had an experience passing through the airport in Dallas that adds her to the list of people who say TSA agents are going too far in their “intrusive” pat downs. According to an interview she gave moments after the incident–she’s clearly emotional in the video–the pageant winner says a female TSA agent touched her inappropriately “at least four times,” leading her to ask “what have I done to deserve this treatment as an upstanding, law-abiding American citizen?” Am I a threat to US security? I was Miss USA, for Pete’s sake!”

Castillo, who describes the pat down in clinical terms that some may find graphic, considers what happened to her to be an assault:

Lou Dobbs invited former Governor Jesse Ventura to appear on his show and both were completely disgusted with the TSA’s airport security measures. Dobbs called the practice of patting down young children at airports “outrageous,” “disgusting” and “un-American,” while Ventura used it as a launching pad to reveal his complete distrust of the entire government.

Earlier this week Fox and Friends reported with reasonable outrage from — both the show’s co-hosts and viewer email — that the TSA was considering collecting DNA samples via Q-tip swab from the mouths of prospective airplane passengers. Steve Doocy pointed out how easy it would be to fake, saying “all you gotta do is put someone else’s DNA in your mouth.” This morning Fox and Friends apologized, but not for Doocy’s awkward suggestion of how to cheat the test, but for reporting that on something that isn’t actually news.

The TSA hasn’t been getting a lot of good press lately. First off, there was all that junk touching. Then there was that story about TSA agents stealing a bunch of stuff. Now, a restaurant in the Seattle area is fighting back by refusing to serve people who work for the TSA. Interesting idea but I think, if they really want to get them, they should just only serve them three ounces of their drink order.

Former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura, a man who knows something about the dangers of advanced body scanning technology, sued Department of Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Administration yesterday over the new airport security measures. In the lawsuit, he alleges that he’s been exposed “to humiliation and degradation through unwanted touching, gripping and rubbing of the intimate areas of his body.” Man, can you imagine the poor TSA agent who had to do those things to a furious Jesse Ventura?

A California woman is suing the TSA following an allegedly harassing and offensive episode at Albuquerque International. Adriene Durso claims to have been subjected to an “invasive breast groping” in full public view by a TSA agent, despite protestations that stemmed from undergoing a mastectomy in the previous year. When the woman’s son asked why he wasn’t getting similar treatment, the TSA supervisor reportedly told the boy “you don’t have boobs.”

Sure, everyone hates the new TSA pat-downs because they’re invasive, but did you know they’re also just part of the wide-spread Homosexual Agenda? That’s what Eugene Delgaudio, Virginia lawmaker believes. Of course, that’s absolutely ridiculous. Why would gay people go to all the trouble to create a universally despised practice just to touch some junk. Besides, it’s fairly likely that the pat-downs are nothing but “security theater” to force people to go through expensive screeners and…wait a second. Gay people love theater! All the pieces fit

Raw Story has some interesting quotes from Ken Wooden, the founder of the child abuse prevention organization Child Lures Prevention who claims that a part of the TSA pat down procedure could potentially help “groom” children for predators. Importantly, Wooden is not talking about the pat downs themselves, but rather a TSA recommendation that parents instructs children that the pat down is “a game.” It could be worse. They could be calling themselves “Uncle TSA Agent.”

It would have been a lot of fun to be on Sean Hannity‘s show last night. During its “Great American Panel” segment, a discussion about airport security led inevitably to a discussion of Fergie’s recent experience with a body scanner—which spurred Juan Williams to possibly make Fox history by uttering the phrase “lady lumps” on air. Williams’s comment sparked both laughter and an observation from Hannity, that he had “lost all control of the panel.” And then Hannity had an unfortunate slip of the tongue that only made the segment sillier.

Last week, it was a “gate rape-y” threat to democracy as we know it, but this week, the TSA scandal seems almost Norman Rockwell-esque in its fading imprint on our microscopic news cycle. After a two week run as the story, the panic over pat-downs and nekkid scans evaporated faster than you can say “Wikileaks.” It’s still disconcerting that this news item about Black Eyed Peas sensation Fergie‘s own TSA scan evoked an odd feeling of nostalgia, the kind usually reserved for a Yakov Smirnoff “What a country!” joke.

Looking to make light of the whole body scanner/patdown controversy? Then say hello to the “Miss TSA Calendar,” a collection of photos that show girls in classic pinup positions. The catch? The pictures are all x-rays, so the only things that are visible in them are bones and the models’ high heels.

Whoopi Goldberg may have just won the title of the TSA’s most rigorous celebrity supporter in this late-autumn junk-touching scandal. After admitting she didn’t mind a good “squeeze” to Mike Huckabee last week, the View co-host took a hard line of attack on the proposed TSA “Opt-Out Day” protest scheduled for the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. That event was not only rude, Goldberg contends– it was terrorism.

If you’re reading this, chances are you made it to your Thanksgiving destination safe and sound—despite any delays caused by body-scanner-related confusion. Even so, there’s still a mountain of controversy surrounding the TSA’s new security screening procedures—and now PETA, the animal rights organization that never shies away from controversy, has entered the fray with a group of new ads that make light of body scanners and pat downs.

A cold flame war has broken out between Salon’s Glenn Greenwald and reporters Mark Ames and Yasha Levine of The Nation over the latter’s article, which attempts to unravel “The Washington Lobbyists and Koch-Funded Libertarians Behind the TSA Scandal.”

Central to that article’s premise is the notion that John Tyner, the originator of the “junk-touch” protest heard ’round the world, is not what he appears to be. Greenwald rightly labels the article a “smear” (an opinion shared by Nation reporter Jeremy Scahill), prompting a lily-livered response from Ames and Levine, and widespread refudiation from fellow liberals.

Thanksgiving is for eating meals prepared by your loved ones and, since we hope you at least like like us here at Mediaite, here’s a little food for thought. Yesterday evening, I was watching Hardball where Chris Matthews was again making it clear that he doesn’t have a problem with the TSA body scanners, when I noticed something interesting. On the screen was a one of the scanner images, completely uncensored. It reminded me that, whenever Fox News shows one, there’s a blurry circle almost as large as the image itself. Hmmm, I wonder why the difference…

During a wacky game that included a very public dressing down and an assistant coach going after a reporter, Texas A&M’s Tony Jerod-Eddie decided to pat down Nebraska’s Ben Cotton at the bottom of the pile during the game’s first quarter.

The incessant anger directed at the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) this past week has been grossly misdirected. While it’s a healthy exercise to question government policy, the demonization and rabid overtures that have been spewing from my compatriots seem so over the top that I simply cannot hold my silence. Why some Americans appear to be rallying en masse against the government’s efforts to keep citizens safe is beyond me. Safety is paramount; obsessive compulsive fear of the government should not supersede rational discussion, nor should it hamper necessary policies.

Traveling today? Prefer not to risk being zapped by x-rays? Make the unfortunate decision to Travel While Underwired? Or just heard so much about the new TSA pat downs that you just have to know what it’s like? Whatever the reason for having your junk firmly felt in the name of national security, Foursquare will [...]

Look, Congressman John Conyers of Michigan’s 14th district—I know SkyMall is boring. There are only so many times you can look at a map of Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport before losing your mind. But unabashedly perusing the pages of Playboy magazine on a crowded airplane? That’s a bit much.

The anger over the TSA security procedures makes for the perfect ongoing news story. Sure, that “Ground Zero Mosque” thing had public anger, an easy narrative, and racial undertones, this story has public anger, an easy narrative, and sexual undertones! So much better! As such, every news outlet in the country is begging their readers to send them their “best airport stories” over Twitter, mouths watering at being the first to get that inevitable big, viral video of the day. And you just know their fingers are crossed hoping that it involves see through lingerie again.

Chris Matthews certainly seems less upset about the new TSA measures than a lot of the folks we’ve heard from. Instead, he thinks the Right has been “ginning up” the controversy and that the alternate would be worse, imagining the reaction “five minutes” after a terrorist attack if the Obama administration hadn’t set up strict security measures. Really though, the reaction would be a thousand times worse if there was a terrorist attack with these protocols.

In the midst of a news cycle dominated by a viral videographer who falsely equates airport security pat-downs with sexual assault, as if on cue, a new YouTube star has emerged to put the whole thing in perspective.