It's December. That means it's time to head home for the holidays. After purchasing an expensive plane ticket, you pack your bags and arrive at the airport, excited to sip an overpriced latte and join your loved ones.

But before you can get to your gate, you need to pass through an airport gauntlet, where a potential cacophony of catastrophe awaits. Included in that is a long line of tired travelers who are already burdened by bags, strollers and babies − and now are waylaid by the Transportation Security Administration, or TSA.

There, any number of things could happen to you in these lines that snake down halls, distracting, discouraging − or even delaying – your trip, all in the name of safety precautions long since outdated, administered by a group of employees so burdened by bureaucratic bloat that they make an appointment at the Department of Motor Vehicles look like a trip to Disney World.

Alas, it's time for us to admit, as proud, free, exasperated Americans, that we need safety at U.S. airports, but that it should be efficient and cost-effective. The TSA is neither. It should be abolished and replaced with something better.

It's widely discussed online that encounters with TSA can range from completely normal and uneventful to embarrassing and

© USA TODAY