Michael Kinsley has a different perspective on the whole TSA screening and junk-touching controversy.
By the way, and he almost discusses this but stops short: I've long assumed that the reason they search old ladies and folks in wheelchairs and nine-year-old girls is that they think while those folks are surely not terrorists, some terrorist might have the idea to hide or plant a weapon on one of those folks, then reclaim it once they're past the security checkpoint. It's not that they think Grandma will knowingly have a gun in her purse but that it wouldn't be that hard for someone else to stash one in there when she wasn't looking.