GOP Senators who refuse full-body patdowns are now considered terror risks. Or rather, they need to know who’s in charge of whom. CBS:
Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky on Monday found himself in a showdown with the Transportation Security Administration in Nashville, Tennessee after refusing to undergo a full-body pat down.
The senator went through the scanner at the airport but was told there was some sort of “anomaly” with the scan and would have to get a full-body pat down, Paul’s chief of staff Doug Stafford told CBS News. Paul did not consent to this and offered another scan, but the TSA insisted on the pat down.
According to the Associated Press, Paul said he was “detained” in a small cubicle in the airport, which is about an hour from his Bowling Green, Kentucky home, and missed his flight to Washington for a Senate session.
The TSA disputed the characterization that Paul was “detained.” The TSA told CBS News that Paul wasn’t detained at any point, though he triggered an alarm during a routine screening and refused to complete the screening process.
Passengers who refuse to comply with security procedures are denied access to the secure gate area. In this case, Paul was escorted out of the screening area by local law enforcement, according to the TSA.
“When an irregularity is found during the TSA screening process, it must be resolved prior to allowing a passenger to proceed to the secure area of the airport,” the TSA said in a statement to CBS News. “Passengers who refuse to complete the screening process cannot be granted access to the secure area in order to ensure the safety of others traveling.”
Evidently, completion of the screening process cannot include a re-scan. Because, well, no.
Both Rand Paul and Ron Paul are known for their libertarian policy positions, and last year, Rand Paul blasted the TSA for conducting unnecessary pat downs.
In a June 2011 hearing, Paul told TSA administrator John Pistole, “I think you ought to get rid of the random pat-downs. The American public is unhappy with them, they’re unhappy with the invasiveness of them.”
After reports surfaced of young children getting intense, random pat-downs, Paul said in the hearing, “It just really just shows that no one is thinking… We need to be doing better police work and doing less of the universal giving up of our freedom to live our life the way we would like to live our life.”
He suggested there should be a “trusted traveler” program in which people who travel frequently and are known to be not a threat, like congressmen, don’t have to be searched.
Both Ron Paul and Rand Paul’s communication director Tweeted about the incident. Then:
Update, 11:52 a.m. ET: A TSA official tells CBS News that Paul was re-booked on another flight and re-screened without incident.
So I guess you can be re-screened?
Very confusing, these rules. Very arbitrary. Except when they’re not.
Hey now, these knuckle-dragging mall cops are the only thing standing between us and certain death at the hands of the terrorists. Why do you want the terrorists to win, Jeff?
Article I section 6.
Sorry about the OT; I haven’t had the stomach to read Jennifer Rubin-Romney in the WaPo today, however she is off the meds again. Apparently this morning she has become a bit… flustered, not to say unhinged… that the gap-toothed Republican primary voter has declined to fall in love with Colossus: The Romney Project.
Good thing these rent-a-cops were allowed to unionize by the Obama admin. Otherwise a bunch of people would be out of work by the end of business.
Finally, some jobs Obama saved!
The war is over. the troops are coming home.
Time to dismantle the evil tools of the neocon military industrial complex and turn those swords into solar panels and enjoy the peace dividend, no?
It’s like this: If you alarm, you have to get the pat down, or you cannot pass through. You can’t just go back through the scanner. Once you leave, you can get back in line and start all over.
So this is about having your chance in line, not really about safety?
I thought it was about giving the Jerry Sanduskys of the world a place where they could work out their baser urges under color of law.
Once you leave, you can get back in line and start all over.
If they let you leave after you’ve alarmed and refused a pat down. I was in line in Boston and there was a fuss over a lady leaving the line before screening, I think they wanted to detain her. I’d hate to see what would happen if you decided to rent a car after a scan.
I have to take off my belt at CVG. At IND, I had a pack of gum in my pocket and the guy asked me, “Is that a pack of gum in you’re pocket?” I said yes, he sent me through. At Memphis, my watch set off the detector, at LaGuardia last month I walked through with my blackberry in my pocket. I had to throw away a full water bottle in my carry-on in Philly, in MSP I put a can of diet Coke through the x-ray. Some places you have to put your shoes directly on the belt, some places you have to have a separate bucket for your laptop and baggie of liquids, others you can dump your laptop, shoes and coat in the same tub.
There’s no standard, even though there’s a standard. Totally useless.
Oh, and I’ve heard a bunch of, “Well, we should treat Senator’s like everyone else.” I call bullshit. If you are a goddamn US Senator and show your ID, you should get a pass. You ain’t bringing down the plane. You may be sinking a metaphorical ship, but you aren’t crashing a plane.
LMC — if a Congressman is on his way to a session of Congress, then they SHOULD be passed through, as a matter of law. But if it’s Rangel on his way to sully a Caribbean beach, I dunno. Sure, they’re not a very high risk, but if we’re not profiling…
this “trusted traveler” idea is gayer than the gown putin wore to his quinceañera
people should be treated equally – not filtered out so the piggy piggy TSA whores can molest the powerless and the meek to no end while the one percent walk right by
Adults as speaking, so the ignorant pikachu should shut up.
http://evilbloggerlady.blogspot.com/2012/01/tsa-detains-us-senator-rand-paul-in.html I linked you.
I fly a lot and it sucks and the only way it gets better is if one percenter grandees like senators and other such congresswhores experience the same inconveniences and molestations as real people
Only people who are equals should be treated equally. Treating people who aren’t the same in an identical fashion, as we do when Grandma gets the prison inmate treatment, is an injustice.
My SIL flew to Afghanistan this weekend for a year tour(Navy). No word on whether she was groped before leaving the country.
Good luck and Godspeed Val.
…people should be treated equally – not filtered out…
It’s just that kind of mushy-minded participation-trophy thinking that established the rules for the TSA in the first place. We should be profiling. We should be treating higher-risk people and higher-risk behavior with greater scrutiny.
If you’re spending time groping an 87-year-old Episcopalian grannie who is only flying because her sister just died in Albuquerque, then either you’re wasting time and resources on a zero-probability bet, or the nation really is so far gone that mall cops are a laughable element.
And given their collective criminal record, I’d say that any member of either chamber of Congress should be given the highest level of scrutiny, and ridiculed and criticized whenever they trot out the “Speech or Debate” privilege.
that sucks about grandma but sometimes grandma has to take one for the team… but the whole bullshit TSA system sucks ass it’s embarrassing and now they want to irradiate your ass coming and going
this failshit little country can’t radiate eggs and chicken and tomatoes for to make them safe for grandma to eat but it has no problem nuking actual people
morons
If the purpose of a TSA screening were to affirm one’s membership in an egalitarian society, then yes, Senators should be scanned like everyone else.
If the purpose of a TSA screening is to ensure that the people flying out of the airport all arrive safely at their destination…
Never mind, obviously I’m just talking crazy now.
nope Congresswhores and our piggy piggy Senators and one percenters and Lady Gaga and John Edwards and Chelsea Clinton and Frankie Muniz and that burned up guy what won the DWTS should wait in line with everyone else I think
if you take them out of the line then the second-class shit citizens are just fucked, simple as that
Did you ever think it was about safety?
Keep in mind that they’re screening for items, not screening people, per se. That wouls be racist. If you leave the screening area, you could be a completely new person for all they care. You could also have rid yourself of the offending item, which is all they care about, to the extent that they actually care at all. You could easily go through the whole process again without ever seeing your original screeners.
sometimes grandma has to take one for the team…
fucking idiot
Screening Senators and celebrities doesn’t unfuck us second-class types, cartoon boy.
I guess adopting the Israeli model of profiling is not going to happen anytime soon?
What? Discriminate like those hatey-hatey Zionist troublemakers? What would CAIR and the Anti-Defamation League say?
there’s nothing special about a piece of shit congresswhore what should entitle them to special airport privileges
nothing at all not even a little
Hatey Zionist troublemakers are our only allies in the Middle East and are expert at neutralizing even more hatey Jihadist troublemakers.
Dunno what the current state of affairs is, but I can recall caterwauling over the special Congressional parking lots at Reagan National back in the eighties. The Congress has long been in the business of looking out for its perks.
OK, I’m going to try and be more clear as to what I mean. A senator is not going to hijack an airplane when they already have the testicles of the American Taxpayer dangling above the food processor of government. They can and do fuck us three ways from Sunday whenever they can, but unless the plane says Oldsmobile on the side I’d bet my dog on them not crashing us.
In other words, shit like this makes bike-riding, urban-living, sustainable-office-working morons think the system is working because even the powerful get their body cavities searched when all it really does is prove that the TSA wouldn’t recognize a threat to air safety if it took a proverbial shit on their proverbial heads.
In yet other words, just be glad the uppity “do you know who I am” shithead is flying commercial and zip him past security so I can put my fucking shoes back on and answer my goddamn email.
… And if you think the goddamn senator from Kentucky is a terrorist I’d like to introduce you to one from Nevada.
Fortunately for us, the last line of defense, the passengers and crew, don’t have to worry about keeping their jobs. All they have to worry about is saving their lives, which is why the underwear bomber got the shit beat out of him, and Janet Napolitano got to tell us that “the system” worked.
I think most senators should get the benefit of the doubt vis-a-vis the terrorisms but still they should be subjected to every indignity what normal people endure cause there’s only like 100 of them anyway so it’s not like it’s gonna help America if we accord them special privileges
happy, it’s only going to happen to him once. Next time, they’ll zip him through or he’ll take a charter. Meanwhile, he’s just managed to get Tonya yelled at before her next shift and that’ll do nothing but piss her off. So if I actually make my flight on time all my plane farts will smell like latex-free nitrile gloves.
yes it’s true he won’t have any trouble in the future but he still should have to take his shoes off and grovel and et cetera just like a True American and especially Nancy Pelosi should when she’s not using her private jet
Personally, I’m astounded a Senator flew commercial, much less went through line.
Anyway, I bet that doesn’t happen much anymore after this…
As usual, happy, you’re trapped in thinking that the status quo must remain. Typical for you, but well outside the OUTLAW mindset of the rest of us.
Grandma doesn’t need to take one for the team. The team needs to get it through its thick skull that grandma is not the enemy. The team needs to figure out that turning everybody and their grandmothers into The Enemy is not a very bright strategy if they wish to remain a going concern.
I don’t need the TSA to nuke me and sexually molest my wife. I need TSA to protect me from retribution if my lovely bride and I happen to kick the shit out of our fellow passengers who start acting suspicious. I need TSA to scrap the mall cops and the X-Ray-Specs(tm) and hire a couple of lawyers to tell CAIR to take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut.
I think the bestest impetus for change is when you have poncey senators and congresswhores inconvenienced and embarrassed… I think if you take that element away then the status quo is all you’ll ever have forever
I believe you think that’s the best way(@40) happyfeet, but it’s still naive thinking.
Ever notice doctors get an awesome parking space with their name on it at the hospital?
The only times I’ve been hasseled at airports have been at crappy little regional airports where they lecture about the size of travel size shampoo bottles and the like.
Regional hubs have been a breeze, but very inconsistant, standards wise, as LMC said above.
I’m thinking if the day you got elected Senator you got a free pass through the TSA for life, all the duty-free coke you could snort and hundreds of healthy hookers to choose from without fear of prosecution from the government or the press, a nine-figure pension with full benefits, a car, secret service, a six hundred thousand dollar per-year bribery allowance, and a beach house anywhere in the world; with a lifetime ban on stock trading, corporate board membership, and practicing law under penalty of death; lifetime imprisonment or both; or any of your immediate offspring running for office within your expected lifetime… we’d get a better class of people running for office.
Perks make the job. Let the help take the office supplies home and you’ll lose fewer office supplies.
does that include postage?
Homeland Security should have been on Perry’s cabinet level departments to do away with.
What a waste of time and money.
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What BT said.
I think the bestest impetus for change is when you have poncey senators and congresswhores inconvenienced and embarrassed…
That’s the electorate’s job, and we did a fine job at the 2010 town halls. We certainly don’t need a federal agency for that.
28th Amendment: “Congress shall make no law to which it is not subject.” Short, pithy, to the point.
Think we can get it passed?
Look for the union label when you flying commercial airlines.
Remember somewhere, our union’s groping,
Our wages going to feed the pols’ pockets we line.
We’ll work you over so stop complaining.
Thanks to the SIEU you’re paying our way!
So always look for the union label.
It says were able to rule over you at TSA!
RI Red, I predict the unambiguous language of your proposed amendment would be treated with the same respect similar unambiguous language in the first amendment is today.
It’s nothing new, Lee.
Senator? Terrorist? A Watch List Stops Kennedy at Airport
CharlesA, it seems as if most amendments are unambiguous. My favorite one says something about the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. Took long enough for the Supremes to get that one right. And it was 5-4.
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Ric Locke on the Rand Paul-TSA matter.
Video now available.
Sorry, this video link works.
you have another link for Mr. Ric?