Air travelers in America shall no more doff their chukkas, their wedges, their wingtips, their espadrilles, or their Mary Janes, according to a rule-change announced by Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Tuesday. It’s been more than two decades since the Transportation Security Administration started putting people’s footwear through its scanners, after a man named Richard Reid tried and failed to detonate his high-top sneakers on a flight to Miami in December 2001. Indeed, the requirement has been in place so long that my adult children, who were born just before and after the September 11 attacks, didn’t even know its rationale. Feeling the cold airline-terminal floor through socks has been, for them, a lifelong ritual—as fundamental to the experience of flight as narrow seats and insufficient overhead bins.The TSA’s mandate to go shoeless, like the volume limit on toiletry items (to thwart the assembly of explosives from… ...[TheTopNews] Read More.
2 weeks ago
