The TSA Strikes Again

The TSA is supposed to be the first line of defense for threats crossing into our country via the airlines. They are also supposedly created to ensure that our flying experience is safe. According to the TSA website, their mission is,

The Transportation Security Administration protects the Nation’s transportation systems to ensure freedom of movement for people and commerce.

The TSA website continues with their core values:

To enhance mission performance and achieve our shared goals, we are committed to promoting a culture founded on these values:

* Integrity:
o We are a people of integrity who respect and care for others and protect the information we handle.
o We are a people who conduct ourselves in an honest, trustworthy and ethical manner at all times.
o We are a people who gain strength from the diversity in our cultures.
* Innovation:
o We are a people who embrace and stand ready for change.
o We are a people who are courageous and willing to take on new challenges.
o We are a people with an enterprising spirit, striving for innovations who accept the risk-taking that comes with it.
* Team Spirit:
o We are a people who are open, respectful and dedicated to making others better.
o We are a people who have a passion for challenge, success and being on a winning team.
o We are a people who will build teams around our strengths.

Not a single one of these core values applies to the TSA's performance, as any traveler can testify. And as for their 'mission, the simple fact is that the TSA is utterly incompetent at every job is purports to perform. The TSA has stopped not a single terrorist attack since its institution - every single major attempt has been thwarted either by passengers or by the terrorists' own incompetence. Examples of the TSA failures can be found in the Shoe Bomber, the Crotch Bomber and the fact that TSA screeners fail the vast majority of tests every time they are tested.

But they are certainly vigilant about trying to take passengers' personal possessions - especially if they are valuable. According to a story today by Daniel Rubin in the Philadelphia Inquirer, the TSA once again has ignored a citizen's Constitutional rights (they are VERY good at ignoring citizens' rights, though they are signally bad at actually doing their jobs) and treating an innocent passenger as a criminal. Writes Rubin,

At what point does an airport search step over the line?

How about when they start going through your checks, and the police call your husband, suspicious you were clearing out the bank account?
...
Two Philadelphia police officers joined at least four TSA officers who had gathered around her. After conferring with the TSA screeners, one of the Philadelphia officers told her he was there because her checks were numbered sequentially, which she says they were not.

"It's an indication you've embezzled these checks," she says the police officer told her. He also told her she appeared nervous. She hadn't before that moment, she says.

She protested when the officer started to walk away with the checks. "That's my money," she remembers saying. The officer's reply? "It's not your money."

This is absolutely infuriating. Citizens are under no compulsion to tell government officials anything and police and TSA personnel have absolutely no right whatsoever to behave with this kind of contempt. Congress needs to make the individual TSA screeners liable for their actions and the police officers in question need to be sued for civil rights violations and hopefully fired. Have any of these people ever heard of the United States Constitution and its prohibitions on unreasonable searches? How about search warrants? How about the presumption of innocence?

i hope this poor woman sues and gets a massive payout from those who utterly ignored her rights. I hope the TSA screeners in questions are fired (oh, wait, they are government workers. You could kill someone and not lose your job - see Ted Kennedy. At the very least the ignorant police officers who showed an equal disregard for the law need to be brought into court and at the very least have their badges stripped.

The TSA is looked about with justifiable contempt by anyone who has ever had to deal with their low-grade, ignorant and incompetent employees - which is just about everyone who has ever flown. Incidents like this simply reinforce the case for the immediate disbandment of the TSA. They are not in any way an improvement on the private firms that formerly did airport security. And like most government workers, they have an inflated sense of their own importance. I hope that the first thing a new Congress does is strip the TSA of their law enforcement status. These people are not law enforcement as they clearly do not know the most basic law of the United States. And the second thing they should do is get rid of the TSA and return its duties to the private firms - at least they have no illusions as to their status!

Thoughts on Maine and Gay marriage

In the aftermath of last night's elections, it has become apparent that the gay movement has failed to redefine marriage in Maine, one of the most left-leaning states in the entire country. I have received several comments on Facebook to the effect that somehow this vote is a disgrace and that those who voted should be ashamed of themselves. Ed Morrissey at Hot Air has weighed in with his thoughts, and between the two points of view, this has occasioned a few thoughts on my part as well.

First, the gay movement has for some time been heavily invested in painting its critics as racists, sexists and any other derogatory term they think they can get away with using. After losing the Proposition 8 vote in California, they unleashed a torrent of hatred and even violence against those they chose to identify as opposing gay marriage. This is tyranny and absent the government supporting it, it doesn't work too well in a free society. If I could give one piece of advice to the gay movement, it would be to concentrate more on persuasion and coming up with valid arguments as to why marriage even needs to be redefined. So far, the gay movement has not made a single valid argument for why society's definition of marriage needs to be redefined. Which brings up the second point.

Marriage is not a right. Not for heterosexuals, not for homosexuals, not for pedophiles, not for sado-masochists and not for anyone else. No one is guaranteed a marriage partner. Marriage has been many things through humanity's long history - a duty, a burden and a privilege. But it has never been a right. Just because four California judges are too arrogant or too power-hungry (yes, the original judgment that provoked Prop 8 was a judicial power grab, just like Roe vs. Wade and the more recent Boumedienne ruling) to understand that does not make their point of view correct. Five justices of the Supreme Court once ruled that slavery was OK too. Were they correct? Marriage is a social contract, and as such, should, be defined y society. For those of you who have difficulties with math, that means a majority. Homosexuals are not by any stretch of the imagination a majority and due to their utter inability to breed true never will be. So absent some violation of their rights, they are not allowed to dictate to the majority. Ed Morrissey over at Hot Air writes,

The recognition of marriage is a legitimate public policy question, one that should be decided through either the legislature or by direct vote in referendums. No one has proposed any law to ban gay relationships, and the law should not interfere with consenting, non-sanguinary adults in creating legal partnerships for property, access, and so on — the incidentals of long-term relationships. But the people of the states have the right to determine what relationships qualify for state recognition as marriage.

But the homosexuals claim that they are being discriminated against - that they are somehow being denied their 'rights'. As to the right of marriage, see above. As to their ability to form domestic partnerships with the consenting adult of their choice, no one is denying them this privilege. However, as Ed notes, it is society's privilege to set the terms of its contracts. Not a tiny little minority. And in most states, homosexuals are offered essentially the same legal protections for their relationships as normal people have. So I fail to see their complaint.

I would suspect that the real goal of the gays is to replace the current definition of marriage with their own and force the rest of society to embrace their particular sexual choices. Allowing them to do this would be a tyranny of the minority, especially when foisted on the majority by a group of arrogant, unelected judges. Which was one of the main rallying points for the Prop 8 supporters last year.

So for the gay movement, may I suggest that it is time to abandon the vicious language and hateful demonization of your opponents. Concentrate on defining a valid argument for why marriage ought to be redefined. So far, the homosexual movement has utterly failed in making a valid argument for redefining marriage. And no, making obviously false comparisons to the civil rights movement is winning no arguments. Persuade society that marriage needs to be redefined. Until that happens, you will continue to lose these contests and your behavior is not calculated to win any friends in the electorates you are so ready to insult!

Ed concludes his piece by writing,

People would be better protected by partnership contracts, where property and child access would be decided and agreed long before problems appeared in the relationship, and leave marriage to the churches, which are much better suited to protect the institution. Divorce is a much bigger danger to marriage than gay marriage ever will be, and the dissolution of the nuclear family a much bigger threat to the fabric of society than gays and lesbians living together. Everyone would be better off with government out of the bedroom and the chapel — and so would marriage.

I think if the homosexual movement wanted to make better use of their energy, they should join with the Tea Party folks in demanding that government get out of our daily lives. Let government give out 'partnership contracts' and leave marriage where it should be - in the domain of the churches and individual choice. Just a suggestion....