I think I'd be mulling a lawsuit after something like this. Episodes like this (and they're more common than you might think) are exactly what is wrong with airport security. Checkpoints are too often staffed with underpaid, power-tripping jackasses who see it as their sworn due to hassle passengers, for no other reason than because they can. I'm flying to Phoenix tomorrow, and I can hardly wait to find out what indignities I'll encounter this time around. Strip search? Cavity search? Remove my fillings? Turn my head and cough? Let the fun begin.... A Long Island mother is fuming that JFK Airport security guards forced her to drink her own breast milk in front of other passengers before boarding a flight - to prove she wasn't carrying any dangerous fluid to wreak havoc. "It was very uncomfortable and very embarrassing and very disgusting," said Elizabeth McGarry, 40, of the April 2 incident. "I'm all for security and everything, but that was a little much." McGarry, who first described her ordeal on Ron Kuby and Curtis Sliwa's WABC Radio show Tuesday, told The Post she was weighing a suggestion from Kuby, a civil-rights lawyer, that she sue. An accountant who lives in Oceanside, McGarry was bound for Florida on a Delta flight when she was singled out for a random search before boarding. After her baby daughter, Maggie, was taken out of her arms, a male guard went through her bag, and asked what was in three bottles, she claimed. "I said, ‘That's the milk for the baby.' And he said, ‘You have to drink it.' And I said, ‘I can't, it's breast milk,' " McGarry recalled. "He said, ‘You have to drink it, or you can't get on the plane.' " The guard refused her offer to daub some milk on her arm, and lick it off herself, she claimed. "He said, ‘You have to drink from all three bottles," she said.
THIS is supposed to provide increased security?? As often as I've travelled since 9.11, I've been subjected to a number of demeaning encounters. This is exactly why I'd like to burn I'd like to burn John Ashcroft and Norman Mineta in effigy. Travellers have been saddled with a system that does nothing to increase security. It has been wonderfully successful, however, at subjecting travellers to random and unprovoked indignities and invasion of personal privacy. I LOVE Amerika....
(Thanks to Larry Simon for this beauty....)
