Monday, June 27, 2011

Mark Steyn On TSA

TSA Obergropinführer of the Day.

At a small airport the other day, I saw a passenger with a popular attitudinal T-shirt slogan patiently submitting to an enhanced gropedown from the TSA. It was a poignant image of the republic at twilight: a man in a “Don’t Tread On Me” T-shirt being trod all over. I wonder why more Americans aren’t outraged by this:

Her 95-year-old mother was detained and extensively searched last Saturday while trying to board a plane to fly to Michigan to be with family members during the final stages of her battle with leukemia.

Her mother, who was in a wheelchair, was asked to remove an adult diaper in order to complete a pat-down search.

There is a term for regimes that submit law-abiding wheelchair-bound dying nonagenarians to public humiliations without probable cause and it isn’t “republic of limited government.” Given everybody’s touchiness over Kathryn’s North Korean comparisons, I’ll say only this: George III wouldn’t have done this to you.