A Damn Good Start

 Posted on March 28, 2011 in Uncategorized

Apropos of TSA, I wrote here that "it's self-evident that one's chances of going to prison for child molestation increase dramatically when one spends every day groping strangers."

In Live-Free-or-Die New Hampshire, the chances that a stranger-groping TSA goon will go to prison have been ratcheted up a tiny bit: the state's legislature has before it a bill that would make it a sex assault, subject to registration,

When the person, acting in his or her role as a security agent of the federal, state, or local government, touches the genitals or breasts of any other person or touches or views with any technological device the genitals or breasts of any other person without probable cause for such touching or viewing."

(H/T Aviation and Aerospace Blawg via Suburban Sheepdog.)

Texas has its own bill in the legislature, HB 1937, which also makes it a sex assault (again, a felony subject to sex-offender registration) "as part of a search performed to grant access to a publicly accessible building or form of transportation, intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly [to] search[] another person without probable cause to believe the person committed an offense; and [to] touch[] the anus, sexual organ, or breasts of the other person, including touching through clothing, or touches the other person in a manner that would be offensive to a reasonable person.

I doubt that the Texas Legislature has the backbone to check the TSA like this (especially when the TSA bribes them with its "state legislators fly free [of groping]" plan); I don't know about New Hampshire. But the fact that the topic is being discussed in statehouses gives me a glimmer of hope.