I have four school-age children. I have been an EMT for 17 years and have transported more abused children to hospitals than I care to count, several of them knocking on death's door on the way. I had to fight to maintain a professional demeanor around the alleged abusers in several of those cases. Child abuse, frankly, pisses me off and I cannot, in any way, comprehend how any adult would want to do these acts to children.

That being said - this thread is about the actions of an overzealous government agency that does not understand, nor desire to comprehend, the very strict limits the Constitution places on government employees. If any of the TSO suspected child abuse should have followed the procedures for any other illegal act that passes beyond their limited administrative search privileges - report it to a damned LEO and move on to the next passenger. They had no business, none whatsoever, in separating parents from children outside of their limited administrative search authority.

Granted, IANAL and will not pretend to be. There have been several times that PTravel has corrected my misconceptions. He has fortified the opinions that many of us non-lawyers have been trying to say to you here.

TSA is not an agency that should be doing "anything for the sake of the children." They should be focused on their administrative search responsibilities.

Your continued repeating of information that pertains to teachers, professional educators and day-care workers is nothing more than argumentum ad nauseam and is, quite frankly, getting incredibly tiresome to read.