Posted on 11/18/2010 12:15:54 AM PST by speciallybland
With a week to go until the Thanksgiving travel peak and Americans' anger continuing to rise over heightened airport-security measures, a U.S. congressman launched legislation today to end what he calls Soviet-style searches by the American government.
Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, introduced the Air Traveler Dignity Act to protect Americans from physical and emotional abuse by federal Transportation Security Administration employees conducting screenings at the nation's airports.
"We have seen the videos of terrified children being grabbed and probed by airport screeners. We have read the stories of Americans being subjected to humiliating body imaging machines and/or forced to have the most intimate parts of their bodies poked and fondled," Paul said.
"This TSA version of our rights looks more like the 'rights' granted in the old Soviet Constitutions, where freedoms were granted to Soviet citizens right up to the moment the state decided to remove those freedoms."
Paul's legislation, H.R. 6416, is just two sentences long, stating:
No law of the United States shall be construed to confer any immunity for a federal employee or agency or any individual or entity that receives federal funds, who subjects an individual to any physical contact (including contact with any clothing the individual is wearing), X-rays, or millimeter waves, or aids in the creation of or views a representation of any part of a individual's body covered by clothing as a condition for such individual to be in an airport or to fly in an aircraft. The preceding sentence shall apply even if the individual or the individual's parent, guardian, or any other individual gives consent.
(Excerpt) Read more at wnd.com ...
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
If you admire Justice Scalia you will know that he will tell you that you have no right whatsoever to be protected from "reasonable" searches but only from "unreasonable" searches. Tell me, why is it unreasonable for me to ask that my government, as and when you choose to get on an airplane potentially with a bomb in your underpants and put me at risk of my life, to search your person especially when we have a history of people doing exactly that?
There is no place in which the federal government has broader scope under the Constitution as originally written and properly interpreted than in interstate commerce when the commerce is actual commerce between states or foreign powers, which modern commercial flight indisputably is. When our government concludes that it is "reasonable" to make these searches you had better have a very good argument why they are unreasonable. The burden is on you.
By the way, the burden is not just that you don't like it, or that you think there might be a better way, or that it's not perfect, your burden is a show that it is "unreasonable." That is, that there is no reasonable relationship to a legitimate legislative or regulatory end, such as saving lives or billions of dollars. Of course, the fact that you can avoid the search simply by not flying makes your burden even more difficult. It should be unnecessary to say that the events of 9/11 make your burden very difficult in the extreme.
Have at it
You have the right to free speech but you don’t have the right to board an airplane. If you don’t want to be searched then don’t fly.
The groping is unreasonable. That is something that I hope everyone agrees has to go.
So you think it’s reasonable for the government to either take a naked picture of you or fondle your genitals?
You think it’s reasonable to do this to children?
You sure seem willing to give up our freedoms.
“The Constitution is the LAW. You can not assign a police power to a private force and then circumvent the law. You wouldnt accept a private security force taking away your right to free speech or the right to practice your religion. (1st amendment) - Or would you?”
Also, aren’t you saying that you are against allowing a private company, the airport, from protecting its own property?
Japan starting to run this story here and there.
Like HERE for example, from AFPBB, and Bloomberg Japan, CNN Japan and some other outlets. From their it will feed onto the other Japanese wires and major dailies and TV, no doubt.
My Japanese quote was pretty close, but they are translating the now famous "Don't touch my junk" as [ 俺のアレに触るな ] (ore no are ni sawaruna) .
When international news spreads of this, it's going to cost the United States, I can guarantee.
What is the alternative? We cannot have our planes blown out of the sky with 300 people aboard and billions of dollars at stake.
And by that I mean it shall be a JUST and PROBABLE CAUSE.
Did the metal detector go off when I walked through? Did a bomb sniffing dog alert an agent to the possible presence of explosives? Am I acting suspiciously? NO? Then you are not allowed to touch me or my child's genitalia. You got that?
That’s the problem by banning profiling. We have to grope everyone and anyone just to show that we are fair even though the probability that person is a terrorist is nil.
Suspicious object found on Air Berlin jet (in Namibia)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2629110/posts
Yes, they are.
But, unfortunately for them and for us, the Kenyan Clown and his circus are determined to destroy our country and its proud institutions.
Losing Japanese tourists is counted as a victory by the Kenyan usurper and his pack of moochers. As long as they are first in the trough, they are happy enough to see our economy and our freedoms obliterated.
Thank you for the link.
I’m sorry. You can’t break the law in order to “protect” me. 18,000 people get murdered each year in this country. It sucks. I wish it wasn’t so. But you can’t break the law in order stop those deaths. I can’t go to your house and take away your gun (and your dinner knives) and put a Swat team in your living room just to make sure you’re “safe”.
“I like Michael Savages suggestion that every member of Congress should be groped by the TSA and nude body scans of them posted on the Drudge Report.”
That could be ugly. I mean that literally. Imagine Pelosi’s wrinkly saggy boobs out there for everyone to see. Or Barney Frank’s junk. Shudder.
I happen to agree with you. The option to not fly is always there, although to put the airlines out of buisness would also be a victory for the terrorists. There is no easy solution to this problem.
Every time I walk through the airport checkpoint the bells go off, the lights flash and the Marine Corps is summoned, because I have a stainless steel knee. I get everything but a coloscopy on the spot and I do not like it but I do not think that I have a constitutional right to object.
If you want to take your baby on the plane that I'm flying on I want that baby inspected without additional probable cause if the authorities so judge because I value my life more than your fastidiousness. You got that?
If you say that is reasonable, then would you also say it is reasonable that when you choose to go to a restaurant/movie theater/mall/park etc., potentially with a bomb in your underpants and put me at risk of my life, that the government may search your person?
If your answer is 'no', then explain why one is a reasonable search and the others are not.
The searches are excessive and violate our rights to Common Carrier travel, such rights to travel as is codified in United States Federal Law, pursuant to 49 U.S.C. § 40103 : US Code - Section 40103: Sovereignty and use of airspace, to wit: A citizen of the United States has a public right of transit through the navigable airspace.
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