After incidents like this pat-down of an infant at a Kansas City airport landed the Transportation Security Administration in a public relations mess, the head of the agency said this morning that TSA has changed its policies regarding the screening of small children.

Speaking to the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, TSA chief John Pistole said screeners have been told to make repeated attempts to screen young children instead of resorting to a pat-down.

Even so, Senator Rand Paul took Pistole to task over the screening of children:

It makes me think you’re clueless, if you think she’s going to attack our country and that you’re not doing your research on the people who want to attack our country… I think you ought to get rid of the random pat-downs. The American public is unhappy with them, they’re unhappy with the invasiveness of them. The Internet is full of jokes about the invasiveness of the pat-down searches and we ought to just consider, is this what we’re willing to do.

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