Today the Transport Security Administration decided to pick a fight with a sitting US Senator, detaining Rand Paul after the scanner at the Nashville airport flagged him. The senator allegedly had an alert on his knee, rolled up his pant leg to show the body part, but the blueshirts insisted on a pat down since they are incapable of independent thought.
The senator refused. To his credit, he did not remind them of Article 1, Section 6 of the United States Constitution that denies law enforcement the detention of an elected congressional official while on route to the capitol unless under charges of treason, or the commission of a felony. (In other words, they had zero legal right to stop him.)
While he was held, the TSA officers refused to allow him to leave a holding cubby. The TSA does not have the authority to detain you; they can have law enforcement remove you from the airport — their charter does not allow for detention. It also does not require you to submit to their molestation — you may simple refuse to travel. Do not let them tell you otherwise.
The TSA trotted out their usual “we don’t profile” line of crap, even though it’s peculiar that they would choose a senator bent on the dismantling of their heinous organization. I like Paul’s take on it: that the machines are rigged to go off randomly to excuse the fondling of travelers. Either that or they don’t work.
Typically, this administration sided with authoritarianism. I’m surprised they didn’t nuke the airport with a Reaper drone, just to be sure. It’s not like the president has been shy about killing US citizens with the things.
It’s time to end the TSA, as well as the Department of Homeland Defense. Maybe a good cleaning of the CIA and other intelligence agencies is in order (that was sarcasm — they need to fire just about everyone in a assistant direction postion and above and hire some actual operators to run the place.) That should save us a bit of coin right off the bat.
