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Customs officials at O'Hare International Airport have gotten into some hot water for their decisions on who to strip-search for possible drug smuggling. (Seems they overwhelmingly prefer to strip women to men-- 67 to 33 percent, and over 50 percent are black folks; 75 percent of those strip-searched had no drugs.) Looking at the internal training manual used by Customs, it's easy to see why subjectivity could creep into their strip-search decisions.

Reasons listed for searching: "suspect is overly talkative, or does not converse," "suspect is unusually cool, or exhibits nervousness," "suspect is overdressed or wears a revealing dress."

These "criteria" remind Dawn of the "symptoms" of child abuse used to "investigate" so many daycare workers in the 1980s: "child sleeps a lot, child doesn't sleep enough," "child is gregarious with adults, child is withdrawn around adults," "child enjoys disrobing, child is overly modest," etc. Dawn can only guess that when tracking down bogeymen, everything becomes a "clue"....