"Hands off the tits! Hands off the tits!"

I've made more or less constant fun of the Transportation Security Administration ever since Congress, in its infinite wisdom, federalized the airport security function three years ago. Undertaken for the ostensible purpose of shoring up the competence, professionalism, and performance of a critical post-9/11 function that was purportedly in a state of shambles under the direction of private security firms, the TSA has been, as I predicted three years ago, a running joke, a travesty of what it was supposed to be, and a more or less complete failure.

And now comes the latest piece de resistance: to smuggle weapons or explosives onto American airliners, all the terrorists have to do is either recruit women with big boobies or top-of-the-line transvestites.

Well, actually, it appears that the boobies don't even have to be all that big.

"A New York attorney meets this week with the Transportation Security Administration hoping for more clarification on airport searches. About two dozen women have complained the searches were abusive."

Abusive in what way, you may ask.

"In response to numerous complaints from women, the government has ordered airport security personnel to avoid touching female passengers between their breasts when performing patdowns.

"Security screeners now will keep their hands to the 'chest perimeter' of women unless detection equipment picks up the possibility that they are hiding explosives between their breasts."

"Chest perimeter." My, oh my. This is why I've given up trying to come up with parodies of this kind of thing. Bureaucratic reality is just too ridiculous for even me to keep up with.

I wonder, just how specifically is the "chest perimeter" defined? Does that mean screeners can give 'em a squeeze, or shove 'em together? Or does the "perimeter" begin at the nipples and extend outward? C'mon, voyeuristic minds want to know. And, you know, the women who consider this aspect of "transportation security" to be "abusive."

When did using boobies as bongo drums at airports get into security SOP? Why, a scant three months ago - since September 22nd, to be precise - when two Chechen women with bombs in their bosoms blew up themselves and the pair of Aeroflot jets they were on, killing ninety Russians in all.

I guess the wonder isn't that funbag pat-downs became a TSA fringe benefit, but that this procedure remained in place for as long as it did before women started whining about it. If the next successful 9/11-style strike is carried out, in whole or in part, by women who secret weapons where screeners hands can now no longer go, I wonder if the inside of the "chest perimeter" will be open-season again.

And, pardon me for noticing, but if explosives can be nestled between love mounds, there would seem to be another "private area" up which they could be inserted. Are TSA, um, "wands," er, "covering" that, uh, "base" as well?

Forget it. Even as parody I don't want "twat perimeter" to enter the bureaucratic lexicon.