Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Alexander Hamilton and the TSA

Lee Cary

In Federalist Paper No. 8, Alexander Hamilton writes about the Transportation Safety Administration, accidently.

Nearly every week, the TSA makes news by strip-searching an elderly woman, or suffering an inexplicable breach in security, or detaining a U.S. Senator (Rand Paul), accusing him of being hostile when a security camera clearly indicates that "passive" better describes his demeanor.

Many frequent business travelers, also known as "road warriors," can recount, on demand, their own unflattering anecdotal stories involving the TSA. (One of my favorites is how a TSA screener angrily jerked a rag doll out of the hand of a one-armed girl, about seven years old, who was reluctant to give up her doll to a stranger to put on the x-ray conveyer belt. Another is how a screener demanded that my now-deceased, then elderly mother-in-law get up out of her wheelchair and walk through the metal detector. The screener couldn't understand that Ola couldn't walk a step.)

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