After a traveler asked online, "Why does TSA need social media anyways?" TSA's Instagram account taunted: "Idk Kyle, why do your friends keep bringing stuff they shouldn't in their carry-on?"

Almost 40,000 people liked that post (slightly fewer than the total number of TSA employees). 

The TSA Instagram team added another smack at travelers who failed to devote their lives to pleasing federal agents: "You see how we don't have 20 different things shoved in our pockets before airport security? Very cutesy, very demure." Obviously, any American who does not approach a TSA checkpoint stripped down like a convict entering a prison shower bears all the blame for whatever problems he causes.

TSA officials pirouetted as if they had the moral high ground. But TSA has perennially relied on idiotic seizure statistics in lieu of competently protecting the American public.

A 2003 TSA press release proudly announced that it had "intercepted more than 4.8 million prohibited items at passenger security checkpoints in its first year, contributing to the security of the traveling public and the nation's 429 commercial airports." TSA chief James Loy bragged to a congressional committee:

"We have identified, intercepted, and therefore kept off aircraft more than 4.8 million dangerous items."

Except that TSA is Idiocy Incarnate. Every fingernail clipper that the TSA seized from a hapless grandmother became proof that the federal government is protecting people better than ever. TSA checkpoint seizures included frying pans, dumbbell sets, horseshoes, and toy robots—all of which presumably would have been used to carry out suicidal hijackings. Covert government tests showed TSA screeners were utterly inept at detecting firearms and mock bombs.

I have been snared by TSA's changing and boneheaded rules for cigar cutters. In 2018, I was flying out of Washington National Airport, heading to a Mises conference. A slack-jawed TSA dweeb came up after my checkpoint screening and he gleefully announced: "Your bag triggered an alarm—we have to search it."