As noted briefly in today's Morning Links, the super-duper full-body scans introduced by the Transporation Security Administration have bagged their first scalp. Unfortunately, the X-Ray Vision machines not dreamed of since the Johnson Smith Novelty catalog stopped publishing didn't catch a real-life terrorist packing a rectal bomb or even a grandmother with an iron pelvis.
As The Smoking Gun documents, so far the biggest fish caught is a TSA screener with a catch-and-release-sized penis who flew into a rage as co-workers taunted him about his manifest shortcomings:
A Transportation Security Administration screener is facing an assault rap after he allegedly beat a co-worker who joked about the size of the man's genitalia after he walked through a security scanner. The May 4 confrontation involved Rolando Negrin, 44, and other TSA employees who had previously taken part in a training session at Miami International Airport, according to the below Miami-Dade Police Department reports. Negrin, pictured in the mug shot at right, and his co-workers had been training with new "whole body image" machines–the controversial kind that provide very revealing images of a traveler–when Negrin walked through the scanner. "The X-ray revealed that [Negrin] has a small penis and co-workers made fun of him on a daily basis," reported cops. Following his arrest, Negrin told police that he "could not take the jokes anymore and lost his mind." After work Tuesday evening, Negrin confronted fellow TSA screener Hugo Osorno in an airport parking lot. Negrin wanted to "resolve a problem," and get Osorno, 34, to "finally respect him."
Can the TSA partner with advertisers? As full-body scans spread around the nation's airports like so much herpes, I'm thinking TSA can get some extra cash by partnering with ExtenZe or some other such enhancement product.
Get the 411 on TSA's 3-1-1! And if that copy of the Bill of Rights you're carrying weighs more than 3.4 ounces, I'm afraid you're going to have to check it.
