Saturday I was at the airport, seeing off my Mexican "daugther" -- our foreign exchange student from a couple years ago -- who had come to visit for Christmas. I waited near the entrance to the security gate as she and her friend went through, just to make sure everything went ok.

It was taking forever; probably ten minutes. I could see that the TSA was going through their bags. I couldn't tell what they were doing exactly, but it was taking a long time.

Eventually I see the TSA agent and my daughter coming around the corner out of the exit. The agent informed me to stay where I was, as I was outside of the secure area. He handed me a six-ounce bottle of moisturizer and explained, "It's too big to carry on."

I asked if I could do anything to get it into her bag or through security, but he said it wouldn't be practical, as she'd have to exit security and have her bag pulled from the checked baggage area. So we decided to just forget about it.

As I walked away I realized how bizarre this situation was. Think about it: Let's say this Mexican moisturizer was some kind of explosive. That's not really a far-fetched assumption, as that's precisely the assumption that the TSA was making by taking it from her bag. So here we have explosive moisturizer being handed to the associate of a foreign citizen by a TSA employee.

Sure, the explosives are not on the airplane, but now, courtesy of the TSA, they're in the terminal. Having been foiled in our attempt to blow up an airplane with moisturizer, why would we not exercise Plan B and take out the terminal?

Of course everyone knows that Mexican moisturizer isn't explosive, and that I'm not going to blow up the terminal. But that doesn't make this incident less bizarre, but rather more bizarre. If we all agree that there's nothing wrong with the moisturizer, then what's the big deal about letting it on the airplane?

Oh, we can't let it on the plane because it might be a bomb? OK, then why give it back to an unknown, unidentified associate of the potential suicide bomber? And just because you've disarmed this potential bomber, why assume that nothing else in her carry-on is a security threat?

This whole thing reminds me of an incident that took place here in Iowa a few years ago. Some crazy kid from Wisconsin was putting explosives in mailboxes, wired to blow up when you opened the mailbox door.

In order to protect postal workers, the Post Office advised citizens to open their mailboxes and leave them open so the delivery person would know it was safe.

Nuts to that! If it's too risky for the mailman, why is it not risky for old ladies, children, and middle-aged programmers to open the mailbox? I don't think so!

Anyway the mail must go through, so the postal workers were required to bring our mail to the door. Our mailman seemed truly shocked when he suggested that I go open the mailbox so he wouldn't have to bring our mail to the door and I refused. So the penalty for me not opening my mailbox is that you bring my mail to me and put it right in my hand? I think my answer is obvious.

They finally caught the kid when they figured out his pattern. He had blown up mailboxes in a little circle near our town, then gone to Nebraska and done the same thing. When he started blowing up mailboxes in a line heading east-southeast out of a city in Oklahoma, the cops realized he was making a big "happy face" in the middle of America and caught him by staking out his next anticipated target.

I'm all for security, but I'm all out against being dumb. Most of what passes for airline security is just dumb. Has been for years. Think about it: Would we have stopped 9/11 if we confiscated Mohammed Atta's aftershave lotion? I don't think so.