Just when you thought security couldn’t get any more demeaning.

As TSA searches make airports look like Venezuelan food lines, some have conjured up solutions that would delight any eight year old birthday girl: Clowns and Ponies. From NBC News:

With mounting delays around the country being blamed on Transportation Security Administration cutbacks and increased passenger traffic, airports are turning to musical performers and free sweets to keep travelers’ tempers in check.

And some airports are getting a little more creative.

Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport is now inviting miniature therapy horses and their handlers from the non-profit Seven Oaks Farms Miniature Therapy Horses program in Hamilton, Ohio to visit the terminals several times a month. (full story)

Isn’t it rich? Rather than figure out a way of expediting the ridiculous and intrusive searches, which have done nothing for security (but increased the sale of bottled water in the shops on the plane side of the scanners), airports have doubled down. I’m sure the most ridiculous part is how many figures are in the salaries of the Government Executives who made these decisions.

We’re tired of being groped and x-rayed, while a guy in a blue Love Boat shirt rummages through our carry-on for something valuable. It’s time to let each airline take responsibility for their own security, so that the customers can pick what level of intrusiveness they’re willing to tolerate. Perhaps one airline passes out handguns to each passenger before they board, and another makes everyone fly in the nude. Don’t like guns? Fly naked. You: still getting searched on the ground; me in the air.

We also might need Congress to send in some Tort reform, because you know if Naked Air security guards didn’t catch that rectal IED, Lawyers will find the passengers’ families, before the FAA finds the black box.

Where it the sanity that prevailed around this Nation before September 11th? There ought to be sanity.

Well, maybe next year…