June 28, 2011 9:29AM 

# Beware the Depends Bomber? 

By [Gene Healy](https://www.cato.org/people/gene-healy) 

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My *Washington Examiner* column this week is on TSA, the federal agency that’s its own [reductio ad absurdum.](http://www.juliansanchez.com/2002/08/28/reductio-creep/)

In [the latest TSA atrocity](http://www.newsherald.com/news/mother-94767-search-adult.html%20), the agency forced a wheelchair-bound, 95-year-old leukemia patient to remove her adult diaper, for fear she might be wired to explode. “It’s something I couldn’t imagine happening on American soil,” her distraught daughter told the press: “Here is my mother, 95 years old, 105 pounds, barely able to stand, and then this.”

My God, what is she *on* about? [Proper procedure was followed!](http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/06/26/florida.tsa.incident/index.html?hpt=hp_c1)

As I [point out in the column](http://washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/2011/06/beware-depends-bomber#ixzz1QZcRpOJW):

> in a classic case of “mission creep,” TSA is taking its show on the road and the rails.
> 
> 
> Remember when, pushing his bullet-train boondoggle in the 2011 State of the Union, President Obama cracked that it would let you travel “without the pat-down”? Not funny—also, not true.
> 
> 
> Earlier this year, Amtrak passengers [in Savannah, Ga.](http://news.travel.aol.com/2011/02/28/why-did-tsa-pat-down-kids-adults-getting-off-train/%20), stepped off into a TSA checkpoint. Though the travelers had already disembarked the train, agents made women lift their shirts to check for bra explosives. Two weeks ago, armed TSA and Homeland Security agents [hit a bus depot](http://dmjuice.desmoinesregister.com/article/20110616/NEWS/110616036/1001) in Des Moines, Iowa, to question passengers and demand their papers.
> 
> 
> These raids are the work of TSA’s “Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response” ([VIPR or “Viper”](http://www.tsa.gov/press/happenings/vipr_blockisland.shtm)) teams—an acronym at once senseless and menacing, much like the agency itself.

All this is happening at a time when al Qaeda looks more harried, pathetic, and weaker than ever. But hey, you can never be too careful, right?

\[caption align=“aligncenter”\][](https://www.cato.org/wp-content/uploads/TSA-Adult-Diaper.jpg)

![Media Name: TSA-Adult-Diaper.jpg](/sites/cato.org/files/styles/pubs_2x/public/wp-content/uploads/TSA-Adult-Diaper.jpg?itok=9KzsbXar) 

Feel Safer?\[/caption\]

##### Related Tags 

[Defense and Foreign Policy](https://www.cato.org/defense-foreign-policy), [Government and Politics](https://www.cato.org/government-politics), [Constitutional Law](https://www.cato.org/constitutional-law), [Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies](https://www.cato.org/robert-levy-center-constitutional-studies) 

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