FLIGHT RISKS: Yesterday the TSA broke with longstanding security guidelines set after September 11, 2001 and will now allow some previously prohibited items, such as pocketknives and novelty / youth baseball bats, onto planes. But some people, including federal air marshals and flight attendants, have railed against the change, with one marshal saying that allowing small knives aboard will make aircraft cabin crew “sitting ducks.” (Photo: Handout via TSA / Reuters / The Telegraph)
Tracks
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) was briefly detained by Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officials at Nashville International Airport Monday after he refused a full-body patdown.
The search was ordered after a full-body scanner device detected an “anomaly” around the senator’s leg, spokeswoman Moira Bagley told FOX News.
Paul offered to be re-screened by the scanner but refused a patdown “on the grounds that it [would be] infringing on his rights,” Bagley said.
TSA officials escorted Paul out of the security area but allowed him to remain in the airport. The Kentucky senator, who has been a vocal critic of the TSA’s patdown procedures, was then re-screened and re-booked on another flight without incident.
The New York Post, “Sen. Rand Paul, Son of Ron Paul, Detained by TSA In Nashville.”
“Is that an anomaly in your pants, or are your civil liberties just happy to see me?”
Even Donald Rumsfeld gets patted down by the TSA.
(via Foreign Policy)
While the TSA is busy patting down 95-year-old women who are in the terminal stage of blood cancer, a foreigner with no ID, no passport and carrying a bag full of expired boarding passes got aboard a flight from JFK to LAX. Yay Homeland Security!
TSA officials made a 95-year-old woman, in the terminal stages of leukemia, remove her adult diaper to complete a patdown. "TSA cannot exempt any group from screening because we know from intelligence that there are terrorists out there that would then exploit that vulnerability," said a spokeswoman, before adding "No, I don't have any sense of decency or common God-damned sense. Why do you ask?"
For some it’ll be faster than flying. Without the patdown.
PRESIDENT OBAMA, calling for increasing the reach of high-speed rail service nationwide in his State of the Union address.
Heh.
Cam Cardow / The Ottawa Citizen.
Blogged for the Trek reference.
Courtesy Gizmodo, here’s a selection of trying-too-hard Tweets from your friends at the Transportation Security Administration.
Shoot me with a blunderbuss now.
Haha, The New Yorker has a collection online of airport security-themed cartoons published well before the current TSA brouhaha—the earliest dating back to 1938. This one is by Ed Fisher and ran in the September 8, 1972 edition. Click on the cartoon for more.
Same as it ever was; same as it ever was.
On May 7, 2010, Adam Savage of Mythbusters hilariously recounted the time airport screeners missed the “two 12-inch-long razor blades” he (inadvertently) carried onto a plane.
Savage says it best: “What the fuck, TSA?”
Relevant.
David Fitzsimmons / The Arizona Daily Star.
Hahahahahahahahahaha
Saturday Night Live
And as for conservative commentators making hay out of the TSA stuff
you seemed to have no problem when the previous President took every invasive step to stop terrorism, from literally invading a country based on specious intelligence to the fucking Patriot Act. So please, don’t make the TSA security measures your latest thing to get Obama on, okay? Because you might find that it was one of your guy’s “decision points” to hire the guy who had a hand in coming up with the whole damned thing.
Tom fucking Toles / The Washington Post.
Hahahahahahahahahaha
The Washington Post reports that the Transportation Security Administration is recruiting for new screeners by way of… pizza boxes.
TSA AGENT: Excuse me, sir. Do you have something in your pocket?
TRAVELER: No, I’m just happy to see you…’ve got my pepperoni pie.
