Christopher Elliott

No one should have been surprised when Nobel Peace Prize winner and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger issued a statement praising the the Transportation Security Administration for its professionalism after he got a pat-down last week in New York.

What was he supposed to do, call the...

When it comes to the TSA, you may know less than you think.

I was reminded of that last week when I heard from Sergei Shevchuk, a reader who was flying from Los Angeles to San Francisco on Delta Air Lines.

"I was pleasantly surprised when an officer advised me...

If you're upset by the TSA's clumsy efforts to protect us from airborne terrorists -- and let's face it, who isn't? -- then you may have missed the good news last week.

Big changes could be coming to America's least favorite federal agency.

Rep. Paul Broun's (R-Ga.) calls for

When you're on probation, you steer clear of trouble. You try to to avoid any appearance of impropriety and you're on your best behavior.

Not the Transportation Security Administration.

The agency assigned to protect America's transportation systems is on notice -- from Congress, from its former chief administrator and...

A new Transportation Security Administration initiative that lets trusted travelers bypass the airport screening line is on the verge of an ambitious expansion. By the end of the year, PreCheck, a government program that offers expedited screening to those who submit to an initial background check, is expected to be...

It happened again last week: A TSA agent was formally charged with swiping an iPad from a passenger.

Or iPads, in Clayton Keith Dovel's case.

Dovel, an airport screener at the busy DFW airport, was arrested in February and indicted last week in the theft of multiple Apple...

If you've ever been browbeaten, barked at or belittled by a TSA agent -- and let's be honest, who among us hasn't? -- then you've got a friend in Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.).

The Senate majority leader last week made the equivalent of a 911 call to Miss Manners,...

Like Alan Rickman in "Die Hard" or Jack Nicholson in "A Few Good Men," the fine men and women of the TSA -- mostly the men, actually -- are really good at being bad.

How else do you explain the bizarre events of the last few days -- the kind...

The story had a familiar ring to it. It involved a group of soldiers returning home from Afghanistan. They were carrying weapons, including rifles, pistols and at least one M-240B machine gun.

And then they got to the TSA screening area in Indianapolis, where an overzealous agent began confiscating...

Nothing makes you forget bad news faster than a little manufactured good news, a PR secret the TSA seems to have stumbled upon last week.

The agency charged with protecting us from airborne terrorists revealed it would allow wedding dresses to be carried on the plane as luggage. Seriously, the...

For the 12th year in a row, ID theft is the number-one complaint to the Federal Trade Commission, the agency announced recently. It's followed by the usual shenanigans, including debt collection schemes, bogus sweepstakes, and bank fraud.

But the real news is the reaction to the list, which is......

If Jon Corbett's viral video about how he outsmarted the TSA's full-body scanners doesn't end the controversial screening program, then it's probably the beginning of the end.

And when the agency charged with protecting America's transportation systems unplugs the last scanner and wheels it out of the airport...

Amy Strand's little breast pump problem is just the latest in a long line of gaffes by the men and women of the TSA. But mostly, the men.

If you haven't already heard, here's what happened to Strand when she tried to board a plane from Lihue to Maui, where...

Where would we be without the TSA?

Representatives of the $8.1 billion-a-year agency, which is charged with protecting America's transportation systems, are stepping into the spotlight to ask that question.

Two of them caught my eye last week: an op-ed by a Federal Security Director in Florida and...

For an agency that claims to have "zero tolerance" for criminal behavior, TSA agents sure spend a lot of time declaring their guilt.

I was reminded of that unfortunate fact a few days ago after a screener reportedly faced accusations of stealing $5,000 from a passenger's jacket as he...

I've been covering the TSA for more than a decade, and as you can imagine, I've seen the agency do some strange things. I wrote about a few recent incidents last week.

But that's nothing compared with the behavior of the TSA protesters.

Don't get me wrong. Sometimes the only way to stand up to outrageous behavior that violates your constitutional rights is to be outrageous. And truth be told, I agree with these protesters more often than not.

It's just that their tactics are, um, a little odd.

Exhibit A: last week's demonstration at the Manchester, N.H., airport. The characters in this video (above) who call themselves Kelly Voluntaryist and Derrick J. Freeman. (Their real names? Who knows!).

It's not that they're handing out leaflets to protest the TSA's scans, pat-downs and other procedures that "strip" us of our rights. It's not even that they're doing it in their underwear. No, it's that they're here in February.

Have you ever taken a walk in your underwear during a New England winter? (I haven't, but it must be c-o-l-d.)

Briefs and bikinis have a long tradition, when it comes to TSA protests.

Corinne Theile, a.k.a. Bikini Girl, made headlines in 2010 when she stripped down to a bikini to protest the TSA's invasive new searches. Last Thanksgiving, she returned to the skies.

Theile says she refuses to use the TSA's body scanners, which she believes are dangerous. And she's reluctant to undergo the alternative, which is a pat-down, because they are often performed incorrectly by TSA officers. She prefers to reduce the amount of clothing she wears through a checkpoint -- ergo the bikini.

Late last year, when she resumed her scantily-clad demonstration, she had worn her swimsuit on seven flights over the past 12 months to protest the TSA's screening methods.

If you're wondering -- does anyone get into trouble for this? -- then meet Morris Malakoff, who showed up in his tightly whities for a flight from Seattle last fall.

"It got me a $500 fine plus the cost of an attorney and eating the ticket," he told me. "I now fly from Vancouver or take train to Portland and fly out."

How about Aaron Tobey, a University of Cincinnati student who removed his shirt before walking through an airport checkpoint a few years ago? He had an abbreviated version of the Fourth Amendment written on his chest. He was briefly detained and later sued the TSA.

When TSA began installing the full-body scanners and forcing travelers to choose between a pat-down and a scan (ah, Thanksgiving 2010 -- who can forget that?) it brought out quite a few underwear protesters, actually.

Jason Rockwood showed up at the security checkpoint at LaGuardia Airport in New York dressed only in undershirt, boxer shorts and slip-on shoes. Not as impressive as the ladies of late, but he had intended to dress only in plastic, and that would have been something.

"At the end of the day I don't think it's a very dignified process to go through the procedures that [the TSA is] using," Rockwood told a New York FOX affiliate, "and so I'm dressing this way to be undignified on behalf of all the people that are submitting to these rules."

One blog even suggested that men wear kilts through the screening area. But then, who owns a kilt?

Tammy Banovac had a few issues, too. She was briefly stopped from flying when TSA agents discovered an unspecified problem near her, uh, bottom.

I know what you're thinking: Has anyone taken all their clothes off to protest the TSA? I haven't heard of any such action, although it was briefly being contemplated.

Most of the passengers reacting to these protests seem embarrassed. They smile awkwardly and they look away. Many of them, I'm sure, have nightmares about showing up to the airport in their underwear ("Oops, I knew I forgot something!") so these actions hit a nerve.

But I think they're really embarrassed that these demonstrations are necessary in the first place. If the TSA wasn't microwaving and massaging air travelers, then none of this would be necessary. At some level, maybe they feel responsible.

Maybe they should. After all, many of them voted for the Congress that created the TSA 10 years ago, and few of them now are willing to stand up to the agency and its police-state tactics. It's the passengers who do nothing that should be most upset about the protesters who bare almost everything to show that airport security has gone too far.

That's certainly how I feel when I see someone standing on their principles in their underwear. I cringe.

I wonder: Is this the only way to get the TSA's attention? Could the more modestly-dressed passengers who agree with the protests have done anything in the last decade to keep this from happening?

What could I have done?

And then I remember that there was, and there still is, something I can do. We have a presidential election in a few months. And I can take action that's more effective than any underwear protest: I can vote.

What's with TSA agents' bizarre behavior lately?

Take Ellen Terrell, who was flying out of Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport. As she was being screened, one of the agents asked, "Do you play tennis?"

"Why?" she responded.

"You just have such a cute figure," the agent said.

As the Dallas...

Remember when the TSA accidentally published its passenger screening manual online a few years ago? Well, in light of last week's events, which call into question the agency's basic operating procedures, I'm not waiting around for it to do that again (although it probably will).

In the spirit of...

Here are two more reasons you should never check valuables in your luggage when you're flying: Michael Pujol and his wife, Betsy Pujol Salazar.

The couple was arrested last week and charged with grand theft. Investigators say Pujol, a TSA agent at Miami International Airport, stuffed items from passengers'...

Sometimes, the TSA can be its own worst enemy.

Consider what it said about itself last week, while other federal agencies were touting their 2011 accomplishments.

TSA came out with a lighthearted list of the Top 10 Good Catches of 2011 (sample: "Snakes, turtles, and birds were found...