Tag: tsa

Tweet of the Day, Scenes From the Clusterf*ck That Is @United’s PR Department edition.

You know you’re having a bad day when the TSA is going all Don’t even TRY to drag us down with you, Sparky on you.  Believe it or not: the TSA is actually not the one at fault here. I know, I know: it confuses me a bit, too.

Via Instapundit.
Continue reading Tweet of the Day, Scenes From the Clusterf*ck That Is @United’s PR Department edition.

#rsrh Dana Loesch gets abused by the TSA again. (@DLoesch)

This pretty much sums it up:

I forget who said this first, but somebody out there noted a little while back that Mitt Romney could get a lot of goodwill out of promising to pound the TSA into the ground. I agree.

#rsrh I say we take off and fire *everybody* in the TSA.

It’s the only way to be sure.

A man’s attempt to bring the ashes of his grandfather home to Indianapolis ended with an angry scene in a Florida airport, with the ashes spilled on the terminal floor.

Allegedly the TSA agent who broke her own agency’s rules laughed about it.  If true, that tells me that the rot in the system is so institutionalized that the only valid way of treating the problem would be the bureaucratic equivalent of BURN IT WITH FIRE.

Via @tabithahale.

#rsrh The TSA messes up in Providence.

They decided to give Chris Loesch – husband to Dana Loesch – the full blue-glove treatment.  And now they’re going to get a full set of headaches out of it.  Personally, I don’t care about the full body scans… but nothing in Dana’s account is incompatible with the conclusion that there’s a quiet group consensus by the TSA to make sure that the people who do object to the full body scans have as unpleasant an alternative as possible.  After all, what are the odds that somebody with a big megaphone and an inclination to use it will be randomly picked to be made example of…

:rattle rattle:

Whoops!  Critical fumble.

#rsrh One last point on the TSA/Rand Paul thing.

With regard to yesterday’s TSA/Rand Paul flap, Ric Locke notes something important here:

Senators are not “anybody else”, they’re Congresscritters. Congresscritters are important, and have that privilege in the Constitution, because they’re Congresscritters. The Framers put the requirement in because they knew history, particularly the events surrounding the English Revolution and Restoration. There’s a long history of rulers getting a free hand by preventing Parliament from meeting, and although there’s no way for Law to stand in the way of that in a practical sense, with that provision as Law of the Land Teh Protector at least can’t argue that the tactic is legal.

There are certain things that I take a hard, will not cross, I don’t care if you like it or not, line on: birthright citizenship, money in politics, “shall issue” rather than “may issue” firearm licensing, and getting in the way of Congressmen going to and fro work.  In each case it’s all based on purely selfish motives:

  • I do not want Congress to be able to declare that somebody born in this country isn’t a citizen after all, because a Congress that can do that can later decide that I don’t qualify, either.  Preventing even the chance of that happening to me is worth any number of Mexican-American anchor babies, frankly.
  • I do not want Congress to be able to define who can and cannot spend money to promote a political cause, because they have already used that power to try to shut me up.  I decline to be shut up, and I want as many opportunities to talk as possible.  If that means Super-PACs and corporate funding of elections, fine by me.
  • I do not want anybody deciding for me what the Second Amendment means or does not mean.  The existing track record of people with political power who also do not like guns stinks.
  • And I do not want there to be a precedent that a sober, peacefully progressing federal legislator on his way back to Washington can be stopped, impeded, harassed, discommoded, or hindered in any way, shape or form.  As Ric notes, there’s a long historical record of how that precedent, once set, can be used for scurrilous ends.

Continue reading #rsrh One last point on the TSA/Rand Paul thing.

Update on the Rand Paul/TSA thing.

The Daily Caller reports that Senator Rand Paul told them that:

  • He was put in a cubicle and told not to leave for two hours:
  • That for an hour and a half he was told that he would have to submit to a pat-down;
  • That eventually Senator Paul was told that he would not have to submit to a pat-down, and was in fact cleared to fly without one;
  • And that he does not believe that the incident was politically motivated.

Continue reading Update on the Rand Paul/TSA thing.

Federal security forces ‘detain’ prominent opposition legislator…

…on his way to a mass anti-administration rally. 

The Daily Caller reports: the short version is, the TSA in Nashville detained Senator Rand Paul (R, KY) after their body scanner went on the fritz and the Senator refused to submit to a full-body pat-down. Senator Paul was scheduled to speak to March for Life this morning as part of their anniversary rally against Roe v. Wade: it’s now an open question whether he’s going to be able to, now.  As somebody noted to me privately: if this was any other Senator you could reasonably expect grandstanding, but Senator Paul is precisely the sort of person who will stubbornly force the TSA to embarrass itself by detaining a Senator on a matter of personal liberty.  Particularly since Senator Paul’s ongoing opposition to full-body pat-downs is quite well known.

In other words: this is what civil disobedience looks like.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

PS: By the way?  As ABC News is actually pointing out, Senators have the following Constitutionally enumerated right: “They shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their Attendance at the Session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same;”(Article I, Section 6).  Senate’s in session today; so let’s see, once and for all, whether Harry Reid’s a true Senator, or just this administration’s lap dog…

#rsrh QOTD, They Ain’t Getting The Point edition.

This one comes from the TSA – and, by the way, I have no idea what the merits are in this specific case.  What amazes me is the tin ear represented by the bolded part:

TSA says it will instruct screeners how to make repeated attempts to screen young children without invasive pat-downs. The instructions should reduce the number of pat-downs on children, TSA says.

Well, THAT makes me feel better, ya, you betcha.  Nice to see that the TSA wants to keep the number of unnecessary gropings of kids down to the bare minimum.  Well done, folks.

Yes, that’s sarcasm.

Moe Lane

Via Hot Air Headlines.

Today’s TSA six-year-old patdown stupidity.

Six year old kid, going to Disneyland…

No, not that six-year-old: another one.

And no, not this six-year-old, either. She’s just on a no-fly list.

Hold on… nope, not this six-year-old! She doesn’t count, because she was actually three!

Continue reading Today’s TSA six-year-old patdown stupidity.

#rsrh Some day, somebody in a TSA patdown line…

…is going to haul off and deck a TSA employee*.

Assuming that the guy (it’ll probably be a guy) survives the experience – which would cause a storm of feces all its own – it will be amazing how quickly a jury lets him off; and it’ll all be because of stories like this one. “TSA Confiscates Mentally Challenged Man’s Toy:” the title says it all.

Moe Lane

PS: I’m generally not in favor of decking anybody; and the majority of TSA people I’ve encountered haven’t actually been awful about the procedures.  But all it takes is one TSA fool intersecting with one traveler having too bad a day to create an incident.

*That this has not happened yet is a testimony to the American people’s civic-mindedness.  If you’re a progressive (or a hard-shelled libertarian) you probably have a different, and much more dismissive, interpretation – but I’m neither, and I say it’s civic-mindedness.