Last week, traveling as a passenger, I boarded a U.S.-bound flight at a foreign airport. I will leave the airport nameless; it really doesn't matter because it's the same situation at many, if not most, of them. <snip> Once at the gate, I had to hoist my bags onto a table in order to let a gloved lackey paw through my laundry in an eagle-eyed search for toothpaste (which, for the record, I also could have sneaked through merely by slipping it into my pocket). And that's not the worst of TSA's let-me-get-this-straight policies. How about the fact that although crew members are subject to the same rigmarole as passengers, other airport workers are not. Caterers, cleaners, mechanics, fuelers, et al., are hit only with occasional random searches.