Free Republic

Did you hear the one about the TSA agent who stole $50,000 worth of electronics equipment from travelers by slipping iPads down his pants? Or the Phoenix-based TSA security director who deliberately increased screening wait times in order to justify increasing his own staff count? Or the TSA administrator who approved the practice of giving TSA trainees test answers in advance of their certification exams? ... The shutdown vividly demonstrates the need to fully privatize the Transportation Security Administration. Now there is the potential for a bipartisan consensus about doing just that. With a budget of $7.8 billion, TSA is...

Over a decade of experience has shown that the nationalization of airport screening was a mistake. ... Private airport screening is the successful approach used by many other high-income nations. Indeed, all main airports in Canada use private screening firms, as do more than 80 percent of Europe’s main airports.

Cops Nab Alleged TSA Thief, Hundreds Already Fired By LEE FERRAN, MEGAN CHUCHMACH , RANDY KREIDER and BRIAN ROSS Oct. 6, 2012 A TSA employee working in a Los Angeles airport could become the 382nd worker fired from the security agency for allegedly stealing from travelers, a years-long problem highlighted in a recent ABC News investigation. Los Angeles police released a statement late Friday saying a passenger came to the authorities after he said money had been taken out of his wallet while he was going through airport security at Los Angeles International Airport. After a brief investigation, police arrested...


They’ve been accused of rampant thievery, spending billions of dollars like drunken sailors, groping children and little old ladies, and making everyone take off their shoes.
 
But the real job of the tens of thousands of screeners at the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is to protect Americans from a terrorist attack.
  
Yet a decade after the TSA was created following the September 11 attacks, the author of the legislation that established the massive agency grades its performance at “D-.”
  
“The whole program has been hijacked by bureaucrats,” said Rep. John Mica (R. -Fla.), chairman of the House Transportation Committee.
  
“It mushroomed into an army,”...