Free Republic

Pro-Palestinian protesters gathered across the nation Monday, including in the Seattle area, blocking landmarks and highways to bring attention to the war in the Middle East. The expressway to the Seattle-Tacoma International (SEA) Airport was blocked by protesters for several hours. Subsequently, 46 people have been arrested, according to spokesperson for the Port of Seattle Perry Cooper. Cooper said those arrested have been sent to SCORE for processing. However, he said, more people may be arrested as an investigation continues.

"It's been nearly four years since 28-year-old Richard "Bebo" Russell, a Horizon Ground service agent with no pilot experience, successfully stole the plane and flew it around Puget Sound before crashing to his death." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IY0EUs_8Ubo

The worker, who worked for Horizontal Air at Seattle Tacoma Airport for nearly four years according to his Linkedn account operated as a ground service agent and operations agent loading bags. ...worker’s personal blog revealed Russell living in Pierce County with his wife, Hannah who he married in 2011 after meeting her in school the year before. The ground service agent, referred to as ‘Rich’ and ‘Richard’ by air traffic controllers, was born in Key West, Florida and moving to Alaska as a child. ... Russell and Hannah opened a bakery called Hannah Marie’s Bakery in North Bend, Oregon and...

Richard Russell, who dreamed of being in the military and once ran a bakery with his wife, was identified as the suicidal airport mechanic who stole an airplane from Sea-Tac International Airport and took it on a dramatic unauthorized flight, where it was chased by fighter planes as he attempted “stunts” in the air before the plane crashed. The man known as “Rich” in air traffic control audio and dubbed the “skyking” on Twitter broke hearts on social media as people followed the unauthorized flight because it came to a fatal end. The incident led to a dramatic and tragic...

A "suicidal" airline employee stole an empty Horizon Air turboprop plane, took off from Sea-Tac International Airport and was chased by military jets before crashing into a small island in the Puget Sound on Friday night, officials said. Preliminary information suggests the crash occurred because the 29-year-old man was "doing stunts in air or lack of flying skills," the Pierce County Sheriff's Department said. Ed Troyer, a spokesman for the Pierce County Sheriff's Department, said on Twitter the man was suicidal and there was no connection to terrorism. Video showed the Horizon Air Q400 doing large loops and other dangerous...

PPlanes were reportedly grounded at the SeaTac International Airport as reports flew from passengers on Twitter that someone might have stolen an airplane and taken it on an unauthorized flight. Nothing was confirmed yet from authorities, but live aviation audio from the tower said authorities were urging a man to try “to land that airplane safely and not hurt anybody.” Other audio reported a ground stop was underway at SeaTac, the airport that services Seattle and Tacoma.

Many of the minimum wage laws passed in recent years, including in major cities such as Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago, include waivers allowing unionized businesses to pay their employees below the minimum. The waivers in effect make unionizing workers a low-cost option for businesses unwilling or unable to pay the new minimum wage, which in cities such as San Francisco and SeaTac, Wash., which also has a waiver, will climb as high as $15 an hour when fully phased in. In those cities, businesses can sign a collective bargaining agreement with a union that sets the wages below...

SEATTLE - A longtime activist for illegal immigrants in the Northwest says she herself is now facing deportation. Maru Mora-Villalpando, a native of Mexico City who has been in the U.S. for more than 25 years, said Tuesday that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has given her a notice to appear before an immigration judge. She says she believes ICE is targeting her because of her activism. She leads an organization called Northwest Detention Center Resistance, which was created in 2014 when detainees at the privately run immigration detention facility in Tacoma began a series of hunger strikes to protest...

Last January, SeaTac implemented a $15 per hour minimum wage for hospitality and transportation workers. The consequences to the drastic hike in wages are just beginning to be realized—and it’s not pretty. A writer for NW Asian Weekly recently blogged about her experience attending an event at a SeaTac hotel. She asked employees if they were “happy with the $15 wage.” The ensuingconversations, “It sounds good, but it’s not good,” the woman said. “Why?” I asked. “I lost my 401k, health insurance, paid holiday, and vacation,” she responded. “No more free food,” she added. “The hotel used to feed her. Now, she...

At the start of the year, the Seattle suburb of SeaTac raised the area’s minimum wage to $15, and the consequences are now starting to be felt. And it’s not just the unions who championed the effort, or those who still have jobs, that are feeling them. Over the last few months, a few things have happened: Managers have taken more responsibilities on themselves, instead of hiring more workers. Businesses have laid off workers, or eliminated their plans to hire more. Area parking now comes with an added “living-wage surcharge.” Hotels have cut employee benefits, free food, and overtime. Shocking:...

Well that’s determined by all sorts of variables – how much the person seeking the job is willing to take, how much the person wanting the job done is willing to pay, the scarcity or abundance of labor, etc.. And so in a free market, when a job is open it is up to the person seeking to have the work done and the person seeking a job to decide what it is worth to each of them. If they can reach agreement, then the job is offered to the person seeking the job. If agreement can’t be reached, then...

'SeaTac has just volunteered to conduct an economic experiment on itself.' Nov. 10--SEATAC voters' apparent acceptance of the $15 minimum wage has pumped up political excitement for a $15 wage in Seattle. So has the strong showing of Kshama Sawant, who made the $15 minimum a centerpiece in her campaign against Seattle City Councilmember Richard Conlin. But there is more to this than activist adrenaline. Fifteen dollars is 61 percent higher than the 2014 minimum wage for Washington, $9.32, which itself is the highest minimum wage of any state. This page opposed the $15 wage because of the possible economic...

A traveler trying to bring four yak skulls back from Tibet was stopped at Sea-Tac Airport by a dog who smelled something funny. The traveler told Customs and Border Protection agriculture specialists he found two of the skulls while hiking and bought two more at a village store. Two of the skulls still had dried flesh attached. They were in a duffel bag that drew the attention of a federal beagle named Woody. After the alert from Woody on April 30, the man declared he had the souvenir skulls, so he won't be prosecuted.

Woman says TSA hair search amounts to racial profiling By Keith Laing - 07/08/11 01:03 PM ET An African-American woman is accusing the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) of racial profiling because her hair was searched at an airport security checkpoint. In an interview Friday on MSNBC, Laura Adiele said that TSA agents notified her after she went through a full-body scanner at Seattle's Sea-Tec Airport that her hair needed to be inspected. Adiele said she had no problem with being patted down, but she said the agents made the request to check her hair after she was scanned because she...

SNIPPET: "On Jan. 3, King County prosecutors claim in charging documents, Basim Salim Abdul-Rahim was seated in the bar of the 13 Coins restaurant..." SNIPPET: "Abdul-Rahim, also known as James Thomas Triblett, was jailed but has since been released after posting bond."

An act of injustice. This really ticks me off. Michael Yon, who I follow regularly as he travels with embedded troops around the world as they fight insurgents, Taliban, al-Qaida and other terrorists was handcuffed and detained by TSA security at SeaTac earlier today when he was returning from overseas. Update: Yon did not say that TSA handcuffed him – I made that assumption. My guess is that it was Customs or Immigration when he was re-entering the USA. I just updated my post headline accordingly. Get this. They wanted to know what his annual income was, and since he...

This from Michael Yon on Facebook: http://ww.facebook.com/MichaelYonFanPageGot arrested at the Seattle airport for refusing to say how much money I make. (The uniformed ones say I was not "arrested", but they definitely handcuffed me.) Their videos and audios should show that I was polite, but simply refused questions that had nothing to do with national security. Port authority police eve...eventually came -- they were professionals -- and rescued me from the border bullies. h/t tip North Shore JournalInstead of going after those that are suspected terrorists, this happens? I was reading a post at JWF, where Joan Rivers was booted...

<p>Two Pakistani men arrested Saturday night at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport remained in custody yesterday after being smuggled into the United States and making cash purchases of one-way tickets on separate airliners to New York's John F. Kennedy Airport.</p> <p>One of the men's names later turned up on a terrorism-related no-fly watch list.</p>

Witnesses on ground reporting booms and flames from on engine...

A 5-year-old boy was detained as "security risk" because he had the same name of someone on the TSA "No-Fly" list. The TSA had to conduct a full search of their persons and belongings. When his mother went to pick him up and hug him and comfort him during the proceedings, she was told not to touch him because he was a national security risk. They also had to frisk her again to make sure the little Dillinger hadn't passed anything dangerous weapons or materials to his mother when she hugged him.KING5 Video