This news brought to you from MiniLuv, I mean, the TSA. On the TSA’s main website, a link directs travelers to “Make Your Trip Better with 3-1-1″ and that “Travelers may now carry liquids and gels in their carry-on bag.” (Emphasis mine)
Interesting, no? How kind of the MiniLuv to grant me the privilege to carry a small amount of my lawfully-acquired property on my person. I wonder where the Federal government finds Constitutional justification for searching citizens and others who are traveling wholly without a warrant, and confiscating (stealing) items from them due to a perceived threat kept secret because it regards “National Security”
Never mind that the scare regarding bombs made from liquid was silly – that the alleged terrorists were terribly unorganized. In similar cases, Federal agents had infiltrated terrorist groups at such an early stage in the planning of the alleged attacks that an entrapment defense (that the alleged crime would not have taken place in the absence of the law enforcement officer performing a sting. An example is an undercover officer bugging a citizen to buy drugs so insistently that the otherwise-law-abiding citizen finds drugs to sell to the undercover cop and being arrested for drug-dealing. The crime would not have been committed had the officer not been present) would be viable. Never mind that the airport security scheme is so reactionary that it will never prevent a terrorist attack. That is, after the shoe bomber’s failed plot, no terrorist is going to attempt a shoe bombing again, but switch to a different, unknown tactic. Repeated audits of the TSA screening systems have shown that auditors can easily sneak weapons through checkpoints. Clearly, our airport security systems are nothing but theater, put on for the benefit of the voting public.
Further, see the stories of a woman fined $500 and placed on a terrorist watch list for accidentally carrying a butter knife through a checkpoint, who was told while being questioned that her constitutional rights did not apply and a women, stopped for carrying a sippy cup of water through a checkpoint for her toddler and refusing to believe that she was required to either surrender the cup (unlikely to please the toddler, and by extension the mother, father, and anyone within shouting distance of an unhappy toddler) or return to the end of a long checkpoint line to dump out the water, who accidentally spilled some and was arrested for assault on the officers around her.
We are told that the terrorists hate our freedoms. Apparently, the current Administration’s solution is to rid us of those freedoms (these incidents, as well as “free speech zones,” racial profiling for those entering the country, and other restrictions on our rights) so that the terrorists will leave us alone. My humble opinion is that this is not a good solution to solving the terrorist threat.
