We'll keep watching to see if TSA is serious about listening or "The Evolution of Security" is just another government shuck.

If you needed to be indicted for high crimes or misdemeanors, your very expensive public relations consultant would advise you that this is as good a time to do the perp walk as any.

Why?  Because so much media and public attention is focused on such earth-shattering topics as whether Barack snubbed Hillary at the State of the Union or Mac is lying about Mitt's record —  presidential politics, in other words — that you would have a fair to middling chance that not even your spouse or neighbors would be told of your unfortunate legal circumstance.

For the same reason, if you were the head of a despised government agency trying to launch any kind of redemptive public relations initiative, even a pr grunt who makes less than Burson-Marsteller's Mark Penn spends on cell phone calls would advise that your timing might be a bit off.

Thus it is that this week the Transportation Security Authority (TSA) decided to open a blog to effort dialogue with the public about its performance, to provide, in the words of TSA Administrator Kip Hawley, "a forum for a lively, open discussion of TSA issues."

The Associated Press dutifully reported the story, with relatively few pick-ups thus far, as might be expected.

AP also reported, "An Associated Press-Ipsos poll conducted last month found that only the Federal Emergency Management Agency [FEMA], still dealing with its mismanagement of Hurricane Katrina, ranked below the TSA among the least-liked federal agencies.  TSA tied with tax collectors in the ranking of a dozen executive branch agencies."

If you were to instruct your computer to take you to TSA's Homepage — www.tsa.gov — you might be able to then navigate to the TSA blog to make your complaint that the TSA seems to have employed an inordinate number of peepers fixated on grandmothers' undergarments or that they scratched your new Gucci loafers or that they confiscated the sledgehammer that you needed for the demolition job to which you were flying.

Being emotionally fraught by any of the above or even more serious complaints (the spouse of a CFIF employee was only this week subjected to search because an errant TSA machine, acknowledged to be malfunctioning, indicated she was carrying nitro glycerin), you might not immediately grasp that the blog is entitled "The Evolution of Security."

That could well be a good title for an academic paper (if you chose not to question whether "evolution" might be a code word implying something), but as the title for a blog encouraging "lively, open discussion," not so good.  Really, really, really not so good.

If you knew, which you undoubtedly didn't until now, to go directly to www.tsa.gov/blog, you could enter the blog directly.  There you would find that most of the fewer than 100 posts (at this writing) are from TSA employees trying to get all warm and cuddly on you.  Whether any of those just finished a shift rudely waving one of those buzzing cattle prods at folks or confiscated your skin regenerating lotion because you had too much on you is unknown.

Airport security remains one of our more serious issues, and TSA has thus far performed far from admirably in that unfortunate but critically necessary function.  Even if the launch of www.tsa.gov/blog shows as little acumen as the agency's approach to its fundamental job, it is something, we can but hope.

Airline passengers should use it, and we say that as conservatives who believe that the private sector is always smarter than any government bureaucracy, and yet, occasionally, someone in government will listen.  We'll keep watching to see if TSA is serious about listening or "The Evolution of Security" is just another government shuck.