TSA vs Alaska Smackdown
 

Round I:

http://www.ktuu.com/news/ktuu-house-...,5706316.story

JUNEAU, Alaska
The Alaska House of Representatives passed a resolution Friday urging the Transportation Security Administration to reconsider its use of pat-down procedures.

The measure, sponsored by Democrats and Republicansm emerged as an official response to the recent incident involving Rep. Sharon Cissna (D-Anchorage), who refused a pat-down at the Seattle Airport and chose to take a ferry back to Alaska instead.

Cissna is a cancer survivor who said she was singled out because of irregularities in her chest, the result of a mastectomy.

The resolution, which passed 37-1, also requests that the Transportation Security Administration conduct pat-down searches using less invasive but equally effective procedures. It also urges Congress to exercise greater oversight of the TSA.

Rep. Bob Lynn (R-Anchorage) voted against the measure.

A measure which will be completely ignored. They need to start arresting and prosecuting the perverts performing the crimes.

Wow. 37-1! That's impressive. That seems to speak very strongly against the lies of the TSA that most people accept the invasive genital gropings. And of course the one dissenter is a republican who probably loves having his weenie rubbed because no one else will. On economic issues that don't involve corporations (they have a hard-on for corporations), I usually prefer the Republican position to the Democratic one, but in everything else Democrats tend to be ever so slightly more pro-liberty and they are definitely more correct on their view of corporations. The fact that Obama is in office and supports all these violations however does lend credence to what we libertarians usually argue: there is no significant difference between the two parties. Even on police state issues Bush = Obama. Nevertheless if you are looking for fascists who support police tasering of 6 year olds and repressive police states and despise personal freedoms (like freedom of speech and freedom from searches) in general the Republican party would be a better place to look.

So they object to the pat-downs but not the naked scanners?

They're starting where they should. They need to fire that shot over the bow, just to make the issue crystal clear in everyones' minds.

When the strongest proponents of ending scope n' grope put forth more forceful legislation, they can point to this mild beginning and remind the faint of heart that they already tried "playing nice".

oh GREAT!!!

equally effective? stupid. . making people take off their clothes could be construed to satisfy that.

How about reasonably effective? How about using the procedures you've used for the past 10 years...

With everything that Rep Cissna went through and the sympathy and support she had, I too find this very dissapointing. Your dealing with people like Big Sis who thinks pax biggest complaint is taking off their shoes (her statement on Huckabe interview ignoring his dig about hands in pants).

The least invasive (and probably more effective) would be explosive-sniffing dogs......just think of the money and time that could be saved by substituting them for the TSA force we now have.....If anyone is dumb enough to try anything with less than a explosive device would be promptly be taken out by his/her fellow passengers, and if still alive upon landing would be taken in to custody.....

If this is all they end up doing then I totally agree that it is very disappointing and very lame, but my understanding is that they are still working on a bill to outlaw the sexual assaults. As for the focus on the genital gropes instead of the scanners, I don't see a huge problem with that as long as you can opt out of the nude scanners and not be patted down. Of course we know that's not going to happen. But it would leave AK TSOs with a difficult choice if the gropings were outlawed. After all you might beat the rap but you won't beat the ride. If the local PD was willing to enforce it, the law would have a significant effect I think. I'd love to see a TSO get tased for not obeying the cops order to leave the checkpoint with him.

They could go back to old pat downs which were more like pat downs than sexual assaults. AS for the resolution urging the Transportation Security Administration to reconsider its use of pat-down procedures, its more of the same thing that the sexual assault survivor organizations and some of the medical survivor groups did when this started. (Just a little more official). I'm sure that they will get a nice response that the TSA is sensitive, aware, and hope to have a solution at some point. (If your monitoring this sight TSA, I think I've got it down pat if you need another hack to do these letters).

Nah, you're a mere piker. You gotta be able to throw around mealy-mouthed shlop about individual privacy vs national security, making anybody who objects seem like a prudish twit.

I'm not clear whether this is the measure that Cissna mentioned previously or just a test resolution to gauge support prior to introducing meaningful legislation akin to the NH & TX bills.

This is admittedly uncharted waters for states so perhaps she is hesitant to rush a bill to the floor.

I'll be very disappointed if she settles for a token measure after all she went through just to get home from Sea-Tac.

The problem with the resolution as it stands, and if it is not being used to gauge a response, it that it does not address the scanners. Should something like this be accepted, it might simply result in no possibility of opting out, such as is the case in the UK. That said, scanner use in the UK is not even close to being at the same level as in the US.

Sod that. We've been "playing nice" for the last five years, and all it's gotten us is more insanity.

Time to stop playing nice, and to give fair warning that the state laws will likely be followed by Committees of Vigilance if they don't stick. I don't want to see TSOs hanging from the lamp post in front of whatever hovel they've taken up residence in, but that's the way it's trending.

If only you could be sure that the dog's name isn't "Clever Hans". You might want to look into the false positive issue with drug and other law enforcement dogs.

Speaking of dogs, am I the only one hopeful that this new dog in town might hunt some day? Any more news from Scotland?
http://www.cascade-technologies.com/...%20process.php

explosive sniffer. hmmm. too bad it wasn't drug sniffing you wanted. I hear Charlie Sheen is available.

...and now the AK State Senate weighs in:

http://www.seattlepi.com/local/6420a...rt_search.html

Another state asserting its sovereignty over Federal authority.

Sadly, these are just resolutions. AK needs legislation making invasive pat downs the equivalent of sexual assault such as PA and NH and, hopefully, NJ is working on.

Would such legislation actually work? I mean, look how well Jim Crow worked in the antebellum South. The Feds stepped in and preempted local laws then. Why wouldn't they do so again?

That's been discussed previously in the NH legislation thread. It might not work - but it shows more seriousness concerning the issue than a resolution.

Please correct me if I'm wrong:

Here's how I see it. Regarding Jim Crow, the Fed was stepping in to enforce laws which GRANTED rights. The same is true of Roe v. Wade. The Fed has made abortion a right of it's citizens. Many states have tried to curb as much as they can of that right, but can't ban it outright.

In this case the Fed is USURPING rights via the TSA. The states should be able to constitutionally declare those federal practices invalid.

The Constitution spells out rights that we have. Technically, no one can take them away. The Fed protects us from the states trying to take the rights away and the states protect us from the Fed trying to take the rights away. In theory, obviously.

I am not a lawyer, have no legal training whatsoever, etc., etc. This just seems like an exercise in logic to me.

Depends on one's perspective. From the perspective of racist segregationists in the Deep South, the Feds were stepping in to deny them their rights to free association. From the perspective of just about everyone else, the Feds were stepping in to grant rights to racial minorities to be treated equally before the law.

(And I'm not a lawyer either, so my reasoning is also pretty suspect.)

I agree that passing a law is certainly stronger than passing a non-binding resolution ... but if the Feds step in and nullify the law, they both end up in the same place. Doesn't mean it shouldn't be done, of course ... but I'm not going to start celebrating just yet.

The Constitution spells out limits on government.

bolding mine
Just a quibble, but the Constitution does not enumerate our rights. It limits the power of the federal government vis vis the states and the citizens of the states. The Bill of Rights within the constititution gives people the impression that you have, but it is a false one.
The powers of the federal government were intended to be limited and FEW. The rights of the citizens and states were relatively unlimited.

This situation is now reversed. We are living under an oppression that the founding states were worried about when they debated on whether to have a federal government at all. Never would they have created this monster if they thought the end result was the strip searching of people's bodies, and sex organs and all being fondled by agencies of the federal government purely on their whim. NEVER.

In fact the Bill of Rights originally was seen as redundant given that those rights were guaranteed by English common & constitutional law going back to the Magna Carta.

Fast forward another hundred years and we see that the English have devolved to abandon constitutional restraints in favor of parliamentary supremacy. The only constitutional constraint on the UK today is the EU charter, and that might well turn out to be a paper tiger.

The state bills if passed would give legitamcy to the police arresting TSA employees. They can actually do that now but most side with the TSA (even to the point of one pax posting police told him Constitution doesn't apply in an airport. The LEO who responded to Cheech offfered to arrest the TSO but said cheech would miss his flight and have to return for trial (and Cheech didn't even object to the pat down itsef, just that rules weren't followed while doing it.). Doesn't matter if court throws cases out, media coverage might wake up the unwashed masses to what is going on. Also, when done PROPERLY it could be debated whether or not the the pat downs are actually sexual assaults. Problem is, seems not very many know how to do it properly from all the complaints. Even Pistole said there should not be touching bare skin, hands inside underwear or genital rubbing. Someone doing those things are acting outside the job and seems to me would be subject to arrest without government job immunity.

Oops. That's what I meant by "protect our rights". I guess what I should have said was something along the lines of "protect us from others trying to take away our rights."

Thanks for the correction.