19 States in 19 Days

 Posted on July 13, 2011 in Uncategorized

We're back from our trip to and around the East Coast-about 6,000 miles on the highway, a riskier mode of travel than taking sixty-seven random airline flights would have been in 2001. Do I feel justified in putting my family in such terrible danger? Let's review some of the TSA news while we were gone.

Our friends at the TSA have been busy. The day that we left, TSA Administrator John Pistole told Congress that the agency had "changed the policy to say that there'll be repeated efforts made to resolve that without a pat-down." That might be nice, in a limited way, except that the American people can't believe a word that Pistole says; the following clip is from 15 November 2010:

Flash forward to 22 June 2011; the same day that Pistole is lying to Congress, saying that TSA has changed its policy with regard to children, while the Bennetts are heading to Memphis up US-59, TSA goons are groping a six-year-old on his way to DisneyLand. (Napoleon's Third Rule of Infantry Combat applies.)

There is a bright side to the TSA: it doesn't just hire pedophiles; it has room for other paraphiliacs, like folks who prefer fondling and humiliating dying 98-year-old women.

(Yeah, yeah, I know: zey are chust doink zeir chobs.)

While we were gone, Texas's anti-TSA-groping bill (not this one, which would have made TSA gropes a felony, but a watered-down one) died, showing the Texas Legislature incapable of calling a US Attorney's bluff.

Fear is still the order of the day, the "whatever it takes" quislings are still running the show, and we're still expected to submit ourselves and our loved ones to the not-so-gentle ministrations of the mall-cop wannabes in the security line in order to get on a plane (or maybe a train, or a ferry, or a subway, or a bus...).

So was the additional risk of driving justified? You bet!

Our days of driving around the country free from TSA interference are limited, if many more people don't get off their complacent fear-raddled fat American butts and stand up for our shared freedom, but we'll keep enjoying these days while we can.