Some of us here at TSA News and at Travel Underground stopped flying long ago. Though we love — no, adore — travel, we stopped flying when the Reign of Molestation was implemented. I took the last flight of my life in September 2010.

by Amy Alkon

I’m not offended by traditional porn — the kind with naked people and and kinky this and that (as long as it isn’t kiddie porn and as long as the participants are consenting adults).

What I am offended by is the obscene constant daily violation by the TSA of Americans’ Fourth Amendment right to not be searched without probable cause. There was yet another disgusting TSA-inflicted ball-grabbing — that became an intense disgusting TSA-inflicted ball probing — of the husband of conservative commentator Dana Loesch:

by Deborah Newell Tornello

All the airport’s a stage, and all the blue-clad men and women merely players.

Actors often remark on the power of costume in terms of bringing a character to life: before donning the white-blonde wig, the pirate’s eye-patch, or the Batsuit, they say, it’s just line-reading and imagination. But once they emerge from wardrobe, Presto! The make-believe becomes near-reality.

by Bill Fisher

Each week there are reports of the TSA groping children and harassing the elderly, along with stories of internal corruption and theft. To divert attention from this continual bad publicity, the TSA likes to place stories trying to show that its employees sometimes do their job and find a weapon that a passenger forgot to remove from a carry-on bag. (Though how doing one’s job is somehow newsworthy is puzzling. Imagine if Domino’s issued a press release every time it delivered a pizza.)

READ THE REST HERE.

Scott Simon, NPR & The Empire

A Catholic priest kicked out of the church over sex abuse allegations has found refuge with the TSA in Philadelphia.

. . . I have asked this question before, and I’ll ask it again: how are parents dealing with the possibility that their children may be molested as a condition of flying? And why are they willing to risk it?

Apparently, $8 billion a year isn’t enough for the TSA. They’ve run into a budget shortfall.

Hey, have some sympathy — the skills required to bully, harass, rob, strip, and grope people don’t come cheap. 

I just got back from a Congressional briefing on Capitol Hill organized by Freedom to Travel USA – specifically Wendy Thomson, Renee Beeker, and Jeff Pierce — and other TSA activists including Sommer Gentry and Jon Corbett. 

READ THE REST HERE.

U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein is a ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Technology, Terrorism, and Homeland Security. She voted for the Patriot Act and has voted for it again every time its reauthorization has come up. Likewise, she has consistently voted against requiring FISA court warrants before the government wiretaps Americans at home or abroad.

So it should come as no surprise that she favors TSA procedures.

To: corpcomm@jetblue.com

. . . I do not accept the phrase “computer glitch,” which is “the dog ate my homework” of our age . . . .

READ THE WHOLE LETTER HERE.

There are several reports out about the fact that the TSA may have deliberately hidden millions of dollars’ worth of unused equipment and lied about it to Congress. Such lying could make TSA officials subject to criminal prosecution.

READ THE REST HERE.

TSA incompetence at nation’s busiest airport
by Bill Fisher

In the wake of (yet another) recent barrage of news stories reporting the TSA groping children and elderly couples, smuggling drugs, assaulting Congressmen, and causing their own security breaches, a related story on TSA background checks — or lack thereof — went relatively unnoticed.

READ THE REST HERE.

Recently, I have been watching passengers moving through TSA lines. They shuffle along, don’t make eye contact, obey all instructions, submit to full-body scanners, have their luggage pawed through, and watch others get called out for additional screening. All the while, most hope that they can move through TSA inspections quickly and quietly, without being noticed.

John Brennan, the man who stripped naked at a TSA checkpoint in Portland last month to prove he had no contraband, is declining to admit guilt for anything and wants a trial to plead his case.

Yesterday I wrote about two cases where passengers who had been assaulted by the TSA were themselves charged with assault. Today comes news of yet another woman who, in trying to protect herself, has been charged with assault and battery.

“The more we do to you, the less you seem to believe we are doing it.”

That infamous statement, by an infamous monster, encapsulates perfectly the human capacity for denial. Indeed not just capacity, but eagerness.

READ THE REST HERE.

The hits just keep on coming. Not content to abuse a few children here and there, the TSA continues its winning streak by singling out a 7-year-old girl in leg braces, a girl who's developmentally disabled, to boot. And not only do they scream at her family and terrify her at the checkpoint, they confront her again the gate, and demand that she return to the checkpoint for further humiliation.