OK that enhanced pat-down they gave her daughter made me queasy. I always opt out of the scanners, so I get the enhanced treatment all the time, and I have NEVER had one that thorough.

Seems like this agent was deliberately trying to make it extra invasive. And that's what's disturbing -- that these agents can "phone in" the pat-downs when they could care less/are in a hurry and then make them extra "intimate" when they're trying to prove a point/piss off a parent.

Nothing to say about this but to express gratitude to those who focus attention on this.

The TSA is, in all respects and certainly in this most obnoxious one, an outrage.

Isn't it so embarrassing (or enraging!) though when you try to talk about the TSA with friends or family members and they kind of shrug their shoulders or look away and very obviously don't want to talk about it? Are there so many "sheeple" out there??

Looks like the mother attempted to film the pat-down, but the cop moved in to block her view. We can still film checkpoints, cant' we? How depressing.

For all you regular readers of the Goddess' blog you can skip past this post. I'm going to post my regular rant about not needing the TSA. For all you new readers, please read it carefully and refute any statement or misstatement. ;-)

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The TSA was not needed one hour and one minute after Tower II was hit!

The paradigm, the norm, the expected, what everyone was taught to do was to sit down, shut up and wait for the plane to land and the negotiations happen. That was the model from Entebbe onward.

The passengers on board did not really know what was about to happen on September 11, 2001 at 8:46:30 when Flight 11 struck Tower I.

Even the passengers on Flight 175 probably didn't realize what was about to happen when they struck Tower II at 9:03:02.

The Pentagon crash of Flight 77 at 9:37:46 may have been still a matter of ignorance.

At 10:03:11 on September 11, 2001, United Airlines Flight 93 crashed after the brave souls counter-attacked and caused the hijackers to crash the plane.

The time difference is 60 minutes and 9 seconds from Tower II being struck to the crash of Flight 93. The shoe bomber and panty bomber were taken down by fellow passengers as well. Recently, JetBlue's Flight 191 pilot was taken down by the passengers once he was out of the cockpit. Additionally how many times have you heard of passengers' concerns and diverted flights?

The TSA is and has always been a joke, no make that a total stupidity, that has wasted our country's fortune going down a rabbit hole.

If you don't believe me look at the 9/11 timeline.

There will never be another 9/11 style attack unless the attackers can arrange planes full of geriatrics, and even then it would be doubtful.

Oh, and someone brought bombs being an issue. If bombs were effective and simple then the Lockerbie bombing would have been repeated multiple times between 21 December 1988 and 11 September 2001. That's 4647 days or 13 years. Where was the TSA in that time.

She was sentenced to a year's probation.

I wonder what would happen if she refused probation. She can do that. That means the judge would have to either sentence her to prison for up to 30 days and/or the $50 fine.

Being on probation means she
subject to her house and property to being searched, drug tests, etc. and essentially giving up her 4th and 5th rights. Which is essentially what were violated in the first place.

I wonder how that would look -- mom going to jail for 30 days because she didn't kiss the TSA's ass.

Intimidation and compliance. That's what an authoritarian government demands, right?

If that little girl flies often, by the time she's 15 or 16 she'll be conditioned to accept being shamefully handled by "officers" and other "authorities". By then, if some policeman, school official or mall cop decides he needs to take her aside for a little "enhanced screening" she'll be desensitized to the indignity of it, and find it expedient to just timidly submit. Maybe she'll even feel a little safer. The "authorities" will love it.

Similar conditioning is occurring in other parts of society. Is this how it's ultimately supposed to work?:

The offender in this case is Police Captain Juan De Los Rios. The victim is a 15 year old girl whom he felt he needed to "check".

http://big.assets.huffingtonpost.com/delosrios.pdf

From page 7 in the Affidavit To Arrest: "The victim stated when the offender told her to take off her clothes she felt afraid, intimidated, and that she had to comply with his instructions because he was a police officer."

Fortunately in this case, though the young girl felt afraid and "embarrassed" afterward, and wasn't going to complain, her older sister and mother, being insufficiently conditioned, encouraged her to report the abuse.

Also in this case, the officer conducted his "check" in the presence of the girl's 19 year old male friend and several surveillance cameras, so it's not just her word against his and whatever other cops will cover for him.

What disturbs me more than those despicable turds in uniforms is the jury that convicted the victim of this abuse.

Being a common, run-of-the-mill sort of man who works regularly for his unexceptional living, I don't like having to give up the time it takes for jury duty. But if I ever get a chance to be on a jury for a case like this one I'll try my best to get selected. Then us jurors will deliberate for as long as it takes to either acquit the defendant or cause a mistrial.

Most people think that a "system of checks and balances" means that each of the three branches of government has the power to amend or prevent actions by the other branches. But that's just part of it. It also includes the right of the people to keep and bear arms and the right to trial by jury.

But if I ever get a chance to be on a jury for a case like this one I'll try my best to get selected.

I hope this kind of thinking spreads. So many people bitch about about jury duty, but it's one of the few areas where individuals have an enormous amount of power, both in determining the course of a person's life and in setting legal precedent.