The absurdity of Walter Shapiro.

Just to cherry pick at an immediately obvious weakspot, Shapiro seems to have sympathy with the comedian Lewis Black. Here's Black:

"So in the name of fighting terrorism, we're willing to start wars, waterboard people and kill civilians with unmanned drones. But the one line we won't cross is our waistline."

Here's reality.

There is no absurd aspect to the protest. Wars, the waterboarding of the three people who were waterboarded, and the use of drones in war are all actually likely to do some good--in fact we already know they have. Molesting a 3 year old can do no good at all, it is useless and expensive "security theater".

As for "suddenly frisky", what is suddenly true is that the searches are suddenly not merely useless but now intolerable.