While dealing with the TSA at the airport can certainly be a hassle, and there are a number of legitimate complaints to be made about the process, it doesn’t really help the cause when a senator gets fussy about a hourly employee doing what they’re supposed to? Yes, “detain” can mean to “hold back from proceeding”, but nearly everyone is going to assume the other main definition, “to keep someone in custody”, which isn’t what happened to Sen. Paul today:
Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul was blocked from boarding a flight Monday by the Transportation Security Administration in Nashville, Tenn., after refusing a full body pat-down, POLITICO has confirmed.
“I spoke with him five minutes ago and he was being detained indefinitely,” Paul spokesperson Moira Bagley said. “The image scan went off; he refused patdown.”
[…]
The TSA disputed this characterization of the incident.
The Kentucky senator triggered an alarm during routine airport screening and declined to finish the process, said a TSA official, but was “not detained at any point.” A targeted pat-down is usually used to address the alarm.
“Passengers, as in this case, who refuse to comply with security procedures are denied access to the secure gate area. He was escorted out of the screening area by local law enforcement,” the official said.
Shortly before noon, the TSA said Paul had been re-booked on another flight and went through the screening process again without incident.
This article appears in Jan 19-25, 2012.
Our founding fathers didn’t want congressmen to be kept from proceeding in order to prevent their participation in our representative democracy. Whether or not he was forcefully put in cuffs or merely kept waiting until the cops escorted him from his naughty cubicle is indifferent. You’re merely afraid that Americans will realize that the TSA violated the law of tha land today, and also every other day they continue to exist. Congressmen have special privileges and are not al quada, too bad you’re too dull to realize that.
It annoys me to no end that every American doesn’t condemn this, regardless of their politics. Read article 1 section 6 of the highest law of the land, the Consitution of the United States. Failing that, exercise some common sense and patriotism, why wouldn’t every American feel proud to help a US Senator get to Washington? Do they actually think it would’ve been bad to rescan him or look at his knee when he raised his pant leg? Paul has been on Air Force One! Paul has access to the Senate! They prevented him from boarding his plane and in fact, DETAINED him. Read what he said. They forced him to wait in a cubicle and when he stepped out, they surrounded him. What non-sense! It’s an outrage! Can’t people think!? The chances of Rand Paul being a hijacker or terrorist are ZERO! To detain a senator shows that these goons would do anything if they were “following protocol”, which is doubly bizarre since people are allowed to rescan all the time! Plus, he’s a vocal opponent of pat-downs! HELLO?????
It is the law to be screened at an airport, no matter who you are or who you think you are. Rand Paul is no different then any body else, Politician are no better then anyone else and he puts his pants on like everyone else one leg at a time, so he refused to be patted down he should have been stripped searched. Politician always like they are above the law and that every thing has to be their way.
OldDog, despite your Marxist brainwashing, Senators are different from everybody else, they have a special provision in the Constitution which gives them special travel privileges. Sorry, i know you wish we were all equally tall, smart, and attractive, which would mean everyone is short, dumb, and ugly, since you can’t raise people up, only lower standards. Well, I guess if you want to use Marxist tactics, we could always use fascist brown shirt tactics, we’ll see how you like your strip search then.
TSA should be dismantled; it is unconstitutional. We are still being held hostage by 19 dead hijackers and a dead osama bin laden.
TSA doesn’t have to treat everyone like a terrorist. I have been there (selected for a full body patdown because of a medical device!), and they are way over the top with their nazi tactics.
When’s the last time anyone hijacked an Israeli airplane. We need to institute their policies. Guess what? They profile because they know who is trying to blow them up. And guess what else? So do we! But we’ve been castrated by politically correctness from profiling and have traded that in for harassing our ordinary citizens as if they were terrorists.
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” Benjamin Franklin
These people who are upset with the TSA for protecting the rest of us should be more upset with the Patriot Act which really takes away our freedoms.
Why take a legitimate issue and use it to lambast an elected official who is trying to highlight the erosion of our constitutional rights?
This is sad Dan, an opportunity to find common ground, on what is ostensibly a liberal issue and you instead cave in to the typical vitriol and mockery that marks our collective decent into a representative oligarchy. Paul referring to himself as “detained” would be like you calling yourself a “journalist.”
Maybe we need to occupy the Tucson Weekly, you sure are not representing the 99% on this one.
our Constitution specifically states that Congressmen are immune from this sort of thing.
But Obama and his administration have decided they are above the law in so many ways I’ve lost count.
Have you lost your mind? When you are held against your will and told, as he was, that you can’t leave, it is detainment. Learn the dang jurisprudence – there’s a whole slew of court cases that defines this as a custodial interrogation. The entire premise of the article is wrong. Your argument is bad, and you should feel bad. http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.…
Although my political views are the polar opposite of Rand Paul’s, I’m 100% on board with his depiction of these ridiculous “enhanced patdowns.” They’re an invasion of our civil rights. Europe has now banned these x-ray RapiScan machines. Recently, there have been lawsuits by those who have been “strip-searched” because of medical devices. Despite the billions given Homeland Security, have they really served the general public?