Anyone think the hotline will help, even a little bit?

I don't. This is just a flailing attempt at improving TSA PR.

TSA caught lying (but what else is new?)

An Austin blogger sums it up:

The [senior citizen] woman arrived at airport security and informed TSA she was wearing a back brace. She was taken off to a private area to remove the back brace ... TSA’s initial response was that the brace was removed, rescreened and returned in accordance with its policies, but when it was reminded that its published policies say that medical braces will NOT be removed, it issued the statement (linked above) saying that the device was removed because “There was a bit of a miscommunication and our officers were told that the passenger was wearing a money belt.”

Here's Bill Fisher's comment on the post (but some of the others are worth clicking through to read, also):

So it takes TSA a week to come up with this lame-brained story [click through or keep reading to find out what the lie is]? It doesn’t matter whether it was a back brace, money belt or quesadillas, it doesn’t change the fact that they shouldn’t be strip searching people in the airports.

With all the lies this agency has told they should be a lot better at it by now. Not only are they lying about strip searching three women over the Thanksgiving weekend they’ve been caught in dozens of other lies over the past year.

Pistole promised to stop groping children four times this year and yet they are still doing it.
TSA said the scanners produced cartoonish images when they debuted, then Denver TSA Area director Pat Ahlstrom admitted in August when they added the privacy software that the previous images were “very graphic”.

They denied patting down the six year old girl in MSP until the video showed up on You Tube and they then claimed that the pat down that they didn’t do was done properly.

They claim to treat passengers “with dignity and respect”, then grope, strip search and harass them and repeatedly deny that these events happened, even after they are caught on video.
They claim that they never interfere with passenger’s right take photos and videos of the checkpoints while dozens of videos are posted on You Tube showing screeners interfering with recordings.

They claim they hold their “professional” workforce to the “highest standards”, while 91% have a high school diploma or less and sixty two have been arrested for crimes in the past year.
By making this announcement, they only reinforce the public perception that TSA is a stupid, deceitful and abusive agency deeply in need of an overhaul.