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Congressman Ron Paul is leading the Tea Party to the airport... and I'm going with him. The best libertarian in Congress is saying enough is enough when it comes to the daily sexaul harassment of innocent Americans at airports across the country. Rep. Paul is sponsoring HR 6416 to deny immunity to TSA employees for their pointless groping of citizens. Watch his statement from the House floor, last night, November 17:
I have not flown since October 2000. I got hot with an airport lackey back in 1995 just because he asked me to remove my belt. I honestly believe that if some poor yokel in a uniform at Joe Foss Field ran his hands over my wife or my daughter, I would say something that would get me arrested. Or I'd just deck him. (The clicking sound you hear is Cory Allen Heidelberger being typed into the TSA watchlist.)
Ron Paul is right. So's Bob Ellis. Uncle Sam, you can have a hand in my pocket, but not in my pants. The lame-duck Congress should pass HR 6416 before Thanksgiving, restore the Frouth Amendment, and reel back and retool airport security.
Drinking Liberally Update (11/15/2024)
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In Politics: Nationally: The Election is over and the wrong side won. I
have nothing to contribute to the barrels of ink being used by Pundits to
explain a...
3 days ago
Yup. I agree. Enough is enough. I've never been comfortable with all of that rigamarole at the airport. The FACT is, when it should have worked, it didn't.
ReplyDeleteThe rest has just been CYA. Well, not MY "A" or my family's either. Enough is too much.
Read this GREAT ARTICLE. When I read your blog post, I thought, yes, so true, and it reminded me of this article I read a week ago.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/11/the-things-he-carried/7057/
Who would have thought the Left and Right would have a common cause so soon after the November elections.
ReplyDeleteHands off my junk!
Why don't we ask the passengers on the airplanes used on 9/11 how they felt about their civil liberties that day? Oh wait, they're all dead.
ReplyDeleteOr why don't we ask the people on the ground that died that morning about the civil liberties of the people on those planes. Oh wait, they're dead too.
Call me a commie, but I really have no interest crashing into the White House next time I fly. I prefer to land on the runway.
Bill, once again I agree with you. It is most certainly government CYA. If an aircraft goes down without the screening half of America will scream that government agencies were not doing enough. Real solution is to do it the way Israel does it, but here it would be considered racial profiling and is unacceptable.
ReplyDeleteCori, I am flying to California in a couple of weeks. Don't know if Sioux Falls has the scanners, but I do know San Diego does. If Sioux Falls does I am going to ask for a body frisk and do the scan in San Diego. Let you know what my reaction is.
Joseph G Thompson
Good post, Cory. I like when we have topics we can agree on. This is certainly a issue where everyone should be on the same side.
ReplyDeletesecurity at the airport should be the job of privately contracted American companies
ReplyDeleteyeah.. companies we trust ... like Halliburton and Blackwater ...
I don't fly anymore because I don't want to get groped, tarmacked, or forced to pee in my pants.
ReplyDeleteI've heard a lot about how the Israelis do airport security. El Al is a very small airline with fewer than 100 flights a day. They can afford to take the time to extensively question each passenger. The US air travel system would slowly grind to a halt if we adopted their practices here. There would be an uproar if TSA employees started asking extensive questions. I can hear it now, the same screaming heads complaining about the pat downs would be complaining about the government asking invasive questions about stuff that was none of their business, and putting all the answers in secret government data base accessible from a computer terminal located in the Oval Office.
ReplyDeleteProfiling Muslim looking people makes no sense. If I was the head of a terrorist organization bent on bringing down a US plane I'd have a fellow believer who didn't look like the American stereotype of a terrorist carry the bomb. A blond haired light skinned person will do nicely. Remember the underwear bomber was a black man.
ReplyDeleteOr better yet I'd exploit the gaps in the air cargo system instead. A bomb in the cargo hold works just as well.
Agreed. I used to travel a lot. I made a game at the concourse of just who might be selected to get the wand treatment at the boarding point. It was pretty easy. Just pick out the "ten" that was boarding.
ReplyDeleteWarren Phear
A couple of ways to look at this:
ReplyDelete(1) you're going to die anyway; (2) to quote Nero Wolfe, if someone really wants to kill you, it's almost impossible to stop them;
so, given these two facts,
what amount of privacy, pride, and personal space are you willing to give up for, say, a couple extra years? Or minutes? If the body scans and/or pat downs are fine, how do you feel about vinyl gloved hands in your mouth? anal/vaginal probes? All of these are potential next steps. What are you willing to submit to in order to stay alive? And would you submit to it in other circumstances? What level of threat is required in order to submit this way? Or are you only following orders? Finally, how were the terrorists of the 19th century, who bombed, assassinated, etc., in other words, the anarchists, how were they stopped? Perhaps a little historical research might be in order...