The TSA didn’t just “detain” Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) Monday: it showed us another of the agency’s many uses to Our Rulers. Not only does it teach the serfs their place in the police-state — utter submission, even to sexual assault and irradiation — it’s also a ready weapon against political enemies.
Sen. Paul was flying from Nashville to the District of Criminals. Many point out that he was on his way to Congress, which means “the TSA directly violated the law as written in the U.S. Constitution” — specifically Art. I, Sec. 6 (which exempts politicians “from Arrest during their Attendance at the Session of their respective Houses” and while they’re in transit to or from).
But of course the TSA violates the Constitution just as egregiously millions of times every day: the Fourth Amendment requires a warrant and reasonable suspicion before any governmental search. Eviscerating the highest law of the land is an old and popular sport at the TSA; tragically, too many Americans accept this horror, and a few even endorse it in the absurdly mistaken belief that the TSA “protects” them.
Regardless, Sen. Paul himself tweeted that he was heading to “the March for Life in DC. A nation cannot long endure w/o respect for the right to Life. Our Liberty depends on it.” Indeed.
At the TSA’s checkpoint, “the image scan went off,” according to “Paul spokesperson Moira Bagley.” A later report added, “The scanner showed something unusual around his knee” though he “doesn’t have any medical hardware or other issues in the joint.” Intriguingly, as Sam Bushman of Liberty News Radio reminded his audience, Dr. Ron Paul does. Did the incompetent boobs at the TSA get their wires crossed yet again?
Whatever, Sen. Paul “refused patdown.” Ms. Bagley mentioned that she had “spoke[n] with him five minutes ago and he was being detained indefinitely.”
In addition to breathtakingly boneheaded moves like this, what else have we come to expect from the satanic TSA? Yep: lies, lies, and more lies. “A TSA official [said] Mr. Paul was not detained at any point.”
My money’s on Ms. Bagley and Sen. Paul: “They detained me in a 10-foot-by-10-foot area reserved for potential terrorists,” the latter wrote in a column for the Washington Times. “… My detention was real and I was repeatedly instructed not to leave the holding area. When I used my phone …, I was told that now I would be subjected to a full body patdown.” The Senator rolled up his trousers’ leg for a visual inspection; he suggested that he return through the scanner to prove his innocence; nothing would satisfy the TSA but groping him. I am mystified why the Senator found this final indignity so much worse than the preceding ones: by complying and then suggesting alternate methods of searching him, he’s already conceded that the Feds own the authority to harass travelers. After that, it’s merely a matter of opinion, with one person objecting to the irradiation of scanning but endorsing a frisk while another rejects both in favor of hand-held wands.
Eventually, “Paul was escorted out of the screening area by local law enforcement.” He was “booked on another flight” and this time “made it through the screening process.”
Interviews taped with Sen. Paul immediately after this ordeal show him admirably calm and unruffled. He also seems to believe that he was the victim of both a false alarm and one of the TSA’s “random” searches (“…two separate people told me that there are random bells and whistles going off in the screening process that the local screeners are not aware of, but are part of random pat-downs,” as Sen. Paul put it to Wolf Blitzer after Blitzer related, “We went to the TSA and we asked them, are there now random alerts that simply go off without any evidence that there’s a problem? And they issued a statement saying no, because we said, can the TSA trigger the machine to indicate there’s an alarm? No.” Once again, for the umpteenth wearying time, we catch the agency in an outright lie.)
But was something much more sinister at work here? Rather than a false alarm or a “random” search, was this a calculated attack not only on a legislator who has often and publicly challenged the TSA, but on his father, the only contender for the Republican presidential nomination calling for the complete abolition of this vile agency and a host of other radical returns to freedom? Were the Pauls’ political opponents sending a message to Dr. Paul, Sr.: “Lay off, or we’ll go after your son”?
Praise God, the heroic Ron Paul came out swinging! “The police state in this country is growing out of control,” he thundered in an official “CAMPAIGN STATEMENT CONCERNING TSA ABUSES.” “One of the ultimate embodiments of this is the TSA that gropes and grabs our children, our seniors, and our loved ones and neighbors with disabilities. The TSA does all of this while doing nothing to keep us safe. That is why my ‘Plan to Restore America,’ in additional [sic] to cutting $1 trillion dollars in federal spending in one year, eliminates the TSA.” Yes!!!!! “We must restore the freedom and respect for liberty that once made American [sic] the greatest nation in human history. I am deeply committed to doing that as President of the United States.”
Ron Paul’s staunch stance against totalitarianism contrasts — unfavorably — with Sen. Paul’s measured response. Disappointingly, his aforementioned column in the Washington Times doesn’t advocate the TSA’s abolition; instead, he promises, “I will be proposing legislation that will allow for adults to be rescreened if they so choose.”
What?
He continues, “…passengers who do everything right, remove their belts, remove their wallets, remove their shoes, their glasses and all of the contents in their pockets are then subjected to random patdowns and tricked into believing that the scanners actually detected something. .. [This] add[s] to the indignity of travel. Those passengers who suffer through the process of partially disrobing should be rewarded with less invasive examination.”
Au contraire: they should never have been “subjected” to any of these insults in the first place. There is no reforming tyranny: we can only abolish it.
Alas, it gets worse: “If a federally funded TSA is going to exist,” the Senator adds, “then its focus should be on police work and it must respect the rights of citizens.” Yes, and if the Federal Reserve is going to exist, it should benefit the people, not the financial elite. Come on. Nor had he finished: Sen. Paul opined in another interview, “I’m not against the rules. I just think they need to have common sense.” Rand: this is the federal government we’re dealing with. Its lackeys wouldn’t recognize common sense if Thomas Paine himself smacked them with it upside the head.
Hearteningly, the Times’ readers set him straight. “Senator Paul, with all due respect, the answer is not a law that requires the TSA to rescreen us upon request. The answer is a law that prohibits the TSA from zapping us with X-rays and groping us without probable cause,” writes one. Writes another, “The TSA-KGB needs to be disbanded, I have personally been harmed and threatened by these thugs and no longer will fly due to their terror tactics for intimidation purposes. They need to be gotten rid of before the last vestiges of freedom … are extinguished.”
Hatred of the TSA boils all over America. Passengers cry for defense from its depredations. This is the time for Sen. Rand, the TSA’s newest and very visible victim, to add his voice to his father’s in demanding abolition.
Liberty and millions of the gate-raped will thank him.
