I hear you! The shoes thing doesn’t bother me so much, but when I try to travel light and just bring a backpack – and then have to pull my laptop out – such a pain in the ass. What gets to me even more is that they do this whole guilt trip where, like you say, it’s un-American to not go along with the process. And a costly tax-payer supported process it is! Happy trails – it’s a good thing you’ve got your wife with you, to keep you in line. 🙂

I agree, it really isn’t worth it – I hate to be elitist but being a TSA agent (or any government employee) is WAY down on my list of jobs I’d want to take. Frankly, in a pinch I’d rather work at McDonald’s or evening shovel horse poop (and I’ve done both of those before). I think the point that they don’t have ANY way of testing what liquids are, but claim to be keeping us safe by setting up these arbitrary laws, is really disgusting. My guess: she just didn’t know the law and made something up. Something dumb, that she probably heard from someone else and took as fact.

I hate how we have no rights at the airport. I didn’t even feel like it was worthwhile for me to ask, “is that really the law?” – she is supposed to be the voice of the law. Ick. Almost as bad as those college students they’re training up (with guns!) for duty in just 4 weeks at the Jersey shore.

Honestly, though, the premise is that liquids in 3 oz quantities cannot be dangerous, so it shouldn’t matter what’s on the label. If they can be dangerous, then, as you say, the policy is futile since someone could put nefarious liquids in legitimate containers.

And for the record, the guidelines say nothing about marking the containers, and their own example photo is of unmarked bottles.