What floors me about these things is not just that refusing the x-ray AND the pat-down will get you a $11,000 fine; it's that you can't even say "Never mind, I just won't fly, I'm going home." You will STILL get fined $11,000 even if you decide not to travel that day!

The rationale I read in the paper is that allowing people to give up and go home without a fine would encourage terrorists to just call it off if they realized they were going to go through the x-ray.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

I'm flying next week, and my airport just installed the x-rays. I'm wearing lycra under my clothes and stripping before I go through security. That will speed up the pat-down procedure, and I can show my cancer scars to explain why I'm not going through the x-ray.