The TSA Won't Allow Small Knives On Planes After All

Last March the TSA created a media firestorm by announcing that it was changing its policies and letting passengers carry small knives — along with some sporting equipment — aboard airplanes.

The people who routinely scream that TSA should loosen its restrictions became very quiet for some reason.

Instead all the people who support stringent TSA restrictions began screaming. And they screamed a lot. We used the entire episode as a case study in why we can't have nice things.

Fast forward to yesterday. TSA declared a take back. They're not going to loosen the restrictions until after they hold some hearings. How long those will take is unknown. And to think: some people actually believe that TSA is incompetently stumbling from one short-sighted policy to another without any sense of overall strategy.

Here's the other question though. TSA head John Pistole said at the time that the agency was going to allow small knives and so on for security reasons.

The argument was that TSA agents were getting distracted by knuckle headed stuff, and that loosening the agency's restrictions would free up security personnel to concentrate on genuine threats.

Presumably his reasoning was the result of some kind of study, or maybe some arguments, or a thought that someone had, or something. He was pretty explicit.

So... is that not true any more? Why isn't it true? Who checked? Did anybody double check? They weren't just making up things as they went along were they? What changed?

Maybe the hearings will clear things up.