I feel so much safer now.

Kathryn Harrington was flying home from vacation last month when screeners at the Tampa, Fla., airport found her bookmark. It’s an 8.5-inch leather strip with small lead weights at each end.


Airport police said it resembled a weighted weapon that could be used to knock people unconscious. So the 52-year-old special education teacher was handcuffed, put into a police car, and charged with carrying a concealed weapon.

Charges were dropped, and the teacher says she’ll never take her bookmark to an airport again.

Update: This longer story has a picture of the menacing $10 bookmark:

Truly appalling. The TSA hasn’t even apologized as far as I can tell. The sad conclusion is that we’ve created an arrogant bureaucracy that terrorizes passengers instead of promoting security.