TSA Asks Elderly Woman to Remove Her Diaper

[Paul Kemp]

http://www.nwfdailynews.com/news/mother-41324-search-adult.html

Defending our freedom of course.

[Joe Republic]

Thank god.  We could have had another 9/11.

[Paul Kemp]

Thank god.  We could have had another 9/11.

Hopefully instead she left the inspectors a number 2.

[Joe Republic]

By the way,

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[courts]

"They" hate us for our freedoms, therefore we have to get rid of all of them. Makes perfect sense.

[Atlas Has Shrugged]

All sarcasm aside, this is another example of the TSA's natural perversion.

[Keystone Phil]

This Bush Administration just won't stop!

[Paul Kemp]

This Bush Administration just won't stop!

Clearly a recommendation by David Vitter.

[tpfkaw]

This Bush Administration just won't stop!

Yeah, Bush has really taken a turn for the worse in his third term.

[Ban my account ffs!]

I honestly just don't get what kind of a mental retard it takes to ask a 95 year old dying grandma to remove her diaper in a pat down search.  But when you're under the boot of your higher ups, a guy will do a lot of unsavory things.  And when that higher up is Janet Napolitano... ....

[patrick1]

A little common sense goes a long way.  This was flat out ridiculous.

[exopolitician]

I didnt know this happened in my hometown, figures. This is pretty awful though.

[Badger]

I won't fault the woman's outrage at all, or her indignation. But.....

The fact is terrorists and drug couriers regularly use children and the infirm (including wheelchair bound) to attempt smuggling explosives or other contraband on board planes. Seriously, give me one reason what turned out to be a dying 95 year old woman with leukemia couldn't have been a dying 95 year old woman with leukemia and willing to meet her maker and strike a blow against the Zionist Occupational Government. Or if she was too senile to understand that her militia freeman daughter had also placed a Semtex bomb in her diaper.

The TSA damn well should've handled the search and her family with absolute kid gloves and every possible accommodation. But the reality check is that if TSA develops a policy, even informally, to give anyone who is visibly frail and wheelchair bound a pass from security screens, how many weeks will it be until terrorists recruit a frail elderly wheelchair-bound person to smuggle a bomb onboard a plane? A month? Two at the outside?

Not a popular opinion on this forum I know, but I'd rather everybody on that plane have the opportunity to also live to 95 as well.

Again, TSA damn well better have handled something this delicate with a maximum of respect and decorum (as best one can under the circumstances at least), and damn any of them that didn't, but the woman's daughter didn't list any specific changes that should be made to screening procedures. For that matter, no one else in this thread did either. Until someone can offer a better idea rather than saying "oh, isn't that dreadful" (it is, but still better than the alternative) or "they should scrap such searches altogether" (an even worse idea), I'm sorry but I'll sit this bandwagon out.

[© tweed]

Thank god.  We could have had another 9/11.

http://leninology.blogspot.com/2005/08/zizek-on-counterfactuals.html

[Joe Republic]

Thank god.  We could have had another 9/11.

http://leninology.blogspot.com/2005/08/zizek-on-counterfactuals.html

http://www.ubersite.com/m/36814

[courts]

These sorts of invasive procedures don't really have any real reason for them Badger.. Other than maybe making good money for scanner manufacturers and inflating budgets to keep people on payroll. Countries like Israel laugh at us for having such ridiculous, humiliating bureaucracy in place when they've been able to more or less go about their lives with a simple profiling system. Never mind that the statistical chance of being killed by terrorists at the airport or anywhere else is so small you might as well worry about the plane being hit by lightning or your car getting totaled on the drive over.

[Badger]

These sorts of invasive procedures don't really have any real reason for them Badger.. Other than maybe making good money for scanner manufacturers and inflating budgets to keep people on payroll. Countries like Israel laugh at us for having such ridiculous, humiliating bureaucracy in place when they've been able to more or less go about their lives with a simple profiling system. Never mind that the statistical chance of being killed by terrorists at the airport or anywhere else is so small you might as well worry about the plane being hit by lightning or your car getting totaled on the drive over.

I think the motives you ascribe to TSA are a little hyperbolic, Mint, but that's a very interesting and enlightening article you linked there.

[© tweed]

I think the motives you ascribe to TSA are a little hyperbolic

no

[minionofmidas]

The fact is terrorists regularly use children and the infirm (including wheelchair bound) to attempt smuggling explosives on board planes.

Cite?

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

I actually sort of agree with Badger, though there are obviously better ways to scan for explosives than removing a 95-year old woman's diaper. And since I doubt anyone wants to be the guy who has to inspect a 95-year old woman's diaper either this is more the result of bureaucracy working like it often does rather than some insidious plot on anyone's behalf.