Paul's blog

Why is it that people in uniforms or with a badge so often think they’re above the law and that you, in dealing with them, automatically lose all your constitutionally given rights?

We all (well, almost all) know that it is unwise to joke about carrying a bomb when you’re anywhere near an airport, and we sort of, reluctantly (don’t we all love bomb jokes?), go along with it. Even though the automatic detainment (and heavy penalty) for using the word ‘bomb’ is a bit silly: statiscally the odds of someone cracking a joke about a bomb actually carrying a bomb, is incredibly much smaller than the guy who doesn’t announce carrying a bomb, actually having one. In fact, it is a bit scarry that in the process of searching for bombs, officials would take anything said to them by the subject-under-investigation into account. Taking someone in custody for joking to have a bomb, is logically as silly as waving him through unsearched when he claims he does not have a bomb. Why all the over-reacting drama? Why not ask the joker “Really? Show me!” and pat him down. And if the bomb-jokes get a bit old, put up a big sign saying ‘Please, no bomb jokes. Heard them all. Not funny’. That would be far more effective than not puting up a sign and sending naive innocent people to jail for five years for making a joke.

 

But again, silly as it may be, I can live with it. It gets way different when the TSA starts detaining people at the gate for calmly and passively expressing non-threatening opinions, as in the case of Ryan Bird, who wrote the political protest statement ‘Kip Hawley is an idiot’ on his toiletry bag. (Kip Hawley is head of the TSA, and I’m not referring to the Tourette Syndrome Association here, although, one has to wonder). He was first told he couldn’t write those things (huh?), then the supervisor had the audacity to inform Ryan that, basically, in dealing with TSA-uniforms and badges, Ryan in essence lost all his constitutional rights (“you can express your opinions ‘out there’, but not ‘here’“), and then proceeded to have Ryan detained. I just checked the first amendment and couldn’t find any exclusion concerning TSA officials!

This is outside of outrageous. What is next? Getting detained for not smiling at some grumpy TSA nazi?

Again, ‘security theatre’, this time by the TSA, whose slogan, ironically, is “TSA … VIGILANT, EFFECTIVE, EFFICIENT” .. they were exactly the opposite in this case.

 

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