Blackmoor Vituperative

This is what we have come to: TSA security guards become so hysterical that they have to be hospitalized, and an entire airport is shut down, because a passenger wants to take some raw honey home with him from his sister’s.

BAKERSFIELD, Calif. — The suspicious material found inside luggage that prompted the shutdown of a California airport Tuesday morning turned out to be five soft drink bottles filled with honey, authorities said.

A passenger’s suitcase tested positive for TNT at Bakersfield’s Meadows Field during a routine swabbing of the bag’s exterior, Kern County Sheriff Donny Youngblood said. When security officials opened the bag, they found bottles filled with an amber liquid, he said.

“Why in this day and age would someone take a chance carrying honey in Gatorade bottles?” Youngblood asked. “That itself is an alarm. It’s hard to understand.”

Investigators said the bag’s owner, Francisco Ramirez, 31, is a gardener from Milwaukee who has been cooperating with authorities. He flew to Bakersfield Dec. 23 to spend Christmas with his sister and was returning Tuesday when the alarm sounded.

When Transportation Security Administration agents opened one of the bottles and tested the contents, the resulting fumes nauseated them, Youngblood said. Both were treated and released at a local hospital.

“It’s encouraging that the system did work, because something is not right there,” Youngblood said. “The system worked the way it was supposed to, but it just takes time when you close an airport — and it costs a lot of money.”

All flights into and out of Meadows Field were canceled for much of Tuesday as authorities searched the terminal for other potential explosives.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Office bomb squad was expected to perform further tests on the honey to determine why at least two false positives were recorded for both TNT and the organic explosive acetone peroxide, or TATP. Bakersfield is about 110 miles north of Los Angeles.

Investigators want to know whether any chemical Ramirez uses in his gardening work could have left traces of potential explosives. They will also run tests on the honey to see if the smoke beekeepers use to subdue the insects could have triggered the false positive test.

Ramirez was not arrested Tuesday. Authorities initially quesitoned his immigration status, but said later he is a legal, permanent resident of the U.S.

“I suspect after this he won’t want to eat honey again, ever,” Youngblood said.

(from California Authorities Say Bottles of Honey Caused Airport Shutdown, Fox News)

Are we ready to call “bullshit” on this nonsense yet, and go back to flying without being terrified into hysteria by bottles of honey? Nothing the TSA has been doing or currently does makes the slightest difference in how safe or how dangerous airplane travel is. Either strip everyone naked, gas them unconscious, and make them spend the whole trip locked in transparent coffins, or leave us the hell alone and let us fly and take our chances.

Please write to your Senators and Representative and ask them to do away with this nonsense.

And someone please tell Kern County Sheriff Donny Youngblood to shut the hell up, because he is making law enforcement — real law enforcement, not TSA rent-a-cops — sound like idiots.