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It’s very frustrating to know at this juncture of the Presidential campaign that no one is talking about the enhanced pat-downs which are performed by TSA agents all over this great country of ours.
As far as I can tell, only one of the original eight candidates for the GOP nomination tried to do anything about it. Rick Perry put it on the special session agenda last year in the Texas legislature. At that point, the state was threatened by US Attorneys to cool it or the administration would cut Texas off from the rest of the flying nation. Texas blinked and killed the bill which would make the pat-downs illegal.
I’d like to think there are a few candidates out there who took a strong stand against the pat-downs. I just don’t remember any of them making an impression with me during the debates which took place late last year and early this year. Looking at the website for the front runner, I don’t see anything there which gives me a warm fuzzy that he’ll do away with them either.
Now, it gets just a little more personal though.
Junior is going off to college in a few months. Given that his grill is still attached to an elaborate system of pulleys and cables, it’s going to be necessary to fly him into town every six weeks or so to go see the orthodontist.
In discussing the matter with him this afternoon, I didn’t really pull any punches.
“You know when you’re flying in and out of town while you’re off at school, you’re going to be subjected to the TSA either taking pictures of your junk, and feeling it up. Just understand that every time they do that, your 4th Amendment rights are being violated. ”
Beyond that, I didn’t give him any advice on how to handle the encounter. I didn’t tell him to be polite and put up with it, and I didn’t tell him to resist. I know what I would do, and I’ll let him make up his own mind on how to react.
Big picture, I find us to be in a pretty sad state of affairs when I’m still writing about the damn things a year and a half after they were instituted, and that there appears to be no end in sight for the pat-downs regardless of who wins the election.
If we aren’t generally screwed right now, what exactly will be the key indicator where we can say we actually are?
