She’s frequently wrong, sometimes embarrassing and even lies on occasion, but this time Dowd is right and The Professor has taken an unnecessary swipe at her:

Somebody tell me what quantity of explosive material they have found through these strip searches, because I’ve got a hunch it’s zero. How many billions are they wasting on this?

Maybe we’re not at the Philip K. Dick level of technology yet. But how about some positive profiling? If airport security can have a watch list for the bad guys, why can’t it develop a watch list for the good guys? Can’t there be a database of trustworthy American frequent travelers who are not going to secrete things in their bras? After all, no one is going to sneak anything in there without our knowledge. Can they at least get a screen?

True, there’s nothing in her column that’s original—the good guy list was proposed a couple of years ago when I was traveling all the time and actually cared—but it is being brought up at a good time (which is, all the time) and it does succinctly describe several current problems with airline security. It also describes security deficiencies elsewhere. I want to retain the credibility to criticize her in the future, so I’ll skip poking her on this one.