Free Republic

The out-of-control Transportation Security Administration is past patdowns at airports – now it's checkpoints and roadblocks. Ever since 2010, when the Transportation Security Administration started requiring that travelers in American airports submit to sexually intrusive gropings based on the apparent anti-terrorism principle that "If we can't feel your nipples, they must be a bomb", the agency's craven apologists have shouted down all constitutional or human rights objections with the mantra "If you don't like it, don't fly!" ... now TSA is invading travel by other means, too. No surprise, really: as soon as she established groping in airports, Napolitano expressed...

We Must Assure Our Skies Are Both Safe and Friendly Kip Hawley, the Transportation Security Administration's former administrator, fails to acknowledge a November 2011 congressional report documenting that the TSA has become a bloated, 65,000-person bureaucracy larger than the departments of Labor, Energy, Education, Housing and Urban Development, and State, combined ("Why Airport Security Is Broken—And How to Fix It," Review, April 14). It has spent $57 billion since 2002, $2.7 billion of which was spent on training. Yet half of the people it has hired and trained have left the agency. With the highest attrition rate among the federal...

DALLAS – A Transportation Security Administration (TSA) official has been charged after being accused of stealing eight iPads from luggage at Dallas/Fort Worth International airport, KXAS-TV reported. Clayton Keith Dovel, a baggage inspector, has been charged with theft by a public servant and has been suspended by the TSA. "The unacceptable behavior of this individual in no way reflects the dedication of our nearly 50,000 transportation security officers who work tirelessly to keep our skies safe," TSA said in a statement obtained by the station. One victim of Dovel's alleged thefts is University of Texas at Arlington student Borna Maira,...

Cops snared 55 Massachusetts men in a sweeping, multi-agency child pornography crackdown — including a Transportation Security Administration officer assigned to Logan International Airport who is just the latest embarrassment for the troubled federal agency. Periodic arrests of TSA agents on sex charges across the nation have fueled criticism of the agency’s screening of its own employees, tasked with patting down the traveling public and keeping the airways safe. At least two other TSA officers assigned to Logan have faced sex charges in the past two years. Sex charges against others have been reported in Virginia, New Hampshire, Nevada, Georgia...

Omer Petti, a 95-year-old retired Air Force major, said he expected to set off metal detectors at San Diego International Airport. He and his 85-year-old travel companion have two replaced knees, a replaced hip and a pair of wheelchairs between them. What they didn't anticipate was being subjected to full-on "humiliating" TSA private-room pat-downs.

Obama’s War on Women– Have any of you had this horrible experience yet? You’re going through security, just passed through the naked scanner, you’re getting your bags and you witness a woman crying hysterically as she is getting her Obama TSA patdown? It’s something you won’t forget. This morning at a Midwest airport I witnessed this poor woman suffering through this horrible sexual violation. It’s an Obama world.

The TSA’s Freudian Craigslist Slip Either someone just attempted the subtlest of jabs at our nation's force of uncomfortably invasive rent-a-cops or the recruiters at the Transportation Security Administration need to invest in a better thesaurus. A job posting on the Ann Arbor, Michigan Craigslist invites would-be screeners to "[b]e part of a imperious security team protecting airports and skies as you proudly establish your future." Imperious, indeed. The Dictionary.com definition of imperious is "domineering in a haughty manner; dictatorial; overbearing." The definition from Google is even better, describing it as "assuming authority without justification." If it was a joke...

An airport security worker was arrested after throwing a cup of hot coffee over a pilot who told her to stop swearing. Transportation Security Administrator (TSA) Lateisha El, 30, was in the middle of a conversation with work colleagues at a JFK Airport terminal when she was interrupted by the American Airlines pilot. Off-duty airman Steven Trivett, 54, was exiting terminal 8 when he overheard El swearing and asked her to tone down the profanity. Trivett, of Butler, Tennessey, told them they should 'conduct themselves more professionally in uniform and not use profanity or the n-word,' according to the New...

SILVER SPRING, Md. - Montgomery County Police have arrested a TSA manager for running a prostitution ring out of a Silver Spring hotel. Bryant Livingston was arrested at his job at Dulles International Airport where he worked as a morning shift manager. Hotel employees were suspicious of activity and called police. When Montgomery County Police arrived and knocked on the hotel room door they saw three naked women in a room and four men. One man admitted to police he had arrived with the promise of sex for $100. Records show a Manassas address for Livingston. He is charged with...

A new law makes it easier for airports to replace federal screeners with private contractors, and several airports, after years of passenger complaints, are lining up to make the change. San Francisco International is among a few airports that use private screeners. The law was welcome news to Larry Dale, president and chief executive of Orlando Sanford International Airport, who said his airport’s request to opt out of using Transportation Security Administration officers last year was denied by the federal government. Mr. Dale said his desire to use private screeners in place of T.S.A. personnel was motivated by hundreds of...

Video shows an Obama TSA perverted goon groping a three-year-old toddler, all in the name of "keeping us safe" from terrorists at an airport in Chicago. Watching the video really helps one understand the TSA's justification in feeling-up a toddler. Obviously, if you watch the video, it's clear that the toddler looks and acts like a terrorist, especially since the country has constantly been attacked by three year olds in wheelchairs. It's understandable that the TSA perverted goon would suspect such a little terrorist. He looks and acts just like one of the 9/11 terrorists, doesn't he?...

Starting Monday, travelers over age 75 at Orlando International Airport and three others nationwide will get a break at security checkpoints under a test program that could allow them to keep their shoes and light jackets on and skip pat-downs. The new guidelines announced Wednesday by the Transportation Security Administration are part of an effort to move away from its one-size-fits-all security procedures and speed lower-risk passengers through while focusing on those who may need more scrutiny. Similar changes were made last fall for travelers 12 and younger.

This video is here to demonstrate that the TSA’s insistence that the nude body scanner program is effective and necessary is nothing but a fraud, just like their claims that the program is safe (radiation what?) and non-invasive (nude pictures who?). The scanners are now effectively worthless, as anyone can beat them with virtually no effort. The TSA has been provided this video in advance of it being made public to give them an opportunity to turn off the scanners and revert to the metal detectors. I personally believe they now have no choice but to turn them off.Please share...

A Dallas woman says TSA agents repeatedly asked her to step back into a body scanning machine at DFW International Airport. “I feel like I was totally exposed,” said Ellen Terrell, who is a wife and mother. “They wanted a nice good look.” When Ellen Terrell and her husband, Charlie, flew out of DFW Airport several months ago, Terrell says she was surprised by a question a female TSA agent asked her. “She says to me, ‘Do you play tennis?’ And I said, ‘Why?’ She said, ‘You just have such a cute figure.’” Terrell says she walked into the body...

Following the horrific events that transpired on that fateful Tuesday morning in September, the federal government assumed the tremendous responsibility of safeguarding America’s travelers. When establishing the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), the Department of Transportation (and later, the newly formed Department of Homeland Security) ultimately chose between two methods of protection to combat the exponentially growing threat of global and domestic terrorism. Type one consists of a security force that, among an unfortunate list of other failures, identifies a mere 30% of all knives and guns that pass through its security detectors, yet simultaneously views cupcakes, cans of Play-Doh (a...

The White House is standing by the Transportation Security Administration in its standoff with Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and his father, Republican presidential candidate Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) The elder Paul called the TSA a "police state" Monday after Sen. Paul was reportedly detained by TSA after he refused to take a pat-down from TSA officials at the Nashville International Airport. White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said Monday that he didn't have any reaction to Paul's comment about "police state."

<p>Posted by Ron Paul on his Facebook page: "My son Rand is currently being detained by the TSA at the Nashville Airport. I'll share more details as the situation unfolds."</p>

The agency will not retest the machines or airline passengers ... After years of rebuffing health concerns over airport scanners, the Transportation Security Administration plans to conduct new tests on the potential radiation exposure from the machines at more than 100 airports nationwide. But the TSA does not plan to retest the machines or passengers. Instead, the agency plans to test its airport security officers to see if they are being exposed to dangerous levels of radiation while working with the scanners. News of the test leaked out after the TSA issued a request last month to government vendors to...

Two TSA workers who pleaded guilty to stealing $40,000 from a drug mule's luggage were each sentenced to six months in prison today. Coumar Persad and Davon Webb admitted in October that they stole a portion of $170,000 that they found in a passenger's bag. Persad noticed the money as it went through the X-ray machine and told Webb to mark it with tape to identify before it was put onto the American Airlines flight to Buenos Aires. ... Persad, 44 of Jackson Heights, remained unapologetic for his actions and ...

As I was reading an email string about tactics to get mainstream Americans aware of what the TSA is actually doing, it occurred to me that I have never told my entire story. So here goes. My saga starts when I was four years old and had my right leg amputated at the knee. Fast-forward to 2004, when I had a spate of business trips to Washington, DC and Texas. 12/1/2004: I walked up to a DTW (Detroit) security checkpoint and announced I had an artificial leg. Without being wanded I was taken aside by two women to Concourse A,...