The TSA has been hounding this woman over apple butter since 2013
A Michigan woman named Mary Hostein has been feuding with the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) since 2013 after she attempted to bring a jar of apple butter through airport security. The agency has slapped her with a $2,000 fine, and has threatened litigation if she doesn't pay soon.
Hostein didn't think that the near-solid spread counted as a liquid subject to the TSA's 3-ounce limit, so she tried to take her jar through two different TSA lines — a decision the TSA claims indicates her intent to break the rules.
For her part, Hostein is shocked that the agency has devoted so much time and levied so harsh a fine over apple butter. "I'm a nobody fighting a government agency that I feel is being relentless," she says. "Is this really what you [the TSA] pay your manpower to do? Is this really protecting our country?"
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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.
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