I nearly went to jail. The TSA agent continues her crime spree.

Returning from the Ron Paul Institute's Washington conference, where my family all pitched in to make the event possible, we found ourselves at the Transportation Security Administration checkpoint.

To this point in our occasional travels, my wife had been able to accompany our two young daughters through the metal detector, while my teenaged son and I had been forced to undergo a "pat-down" because we refused to submit to the scanner. All of a sudden this time was different. An aggressive TSA officer barked that my 13 year old girl could not accompany her mother and younger sister through the metal detector, but rather would have to submit to a "pat-down."

Meanwhile my 10 year old daughter had already been sent through the detector and was far out of our sight on the other side of the machine. That made me anxious, as it would any parent.