After representative John Dingell was asked to drop his pants at Washington's National Airport last week, some people felt safer. Others, like me, decided that we'd lost our collective minds. A near strip search of a 75-year-old Congressman whose artificial hip has set off a metal detector--while suspected al-Qaeda operative Richard Reid slips onto a Paris-to-Miami flight with a bomb in his shoe--isn't making us safer. It's making us ridiculous for entrusting our security to an unskilled police force that must make split-second decisions on the basis of incomplete data.
Incidents like this--and airport waits longer than the flight itself--have pushed...