{"id":1237,"date":"2010-11-24T15:30:23","date_gmt":"2010-11-24T22:30:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/?p=1237"},"modified":"2010-11-24T15:30:23","modified_gmt":"2010-11-24T22:30:23","slug":"all-air-travelers-presumed-terrorists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/?p=1237","title":{"rendered":"All Air Travelers Presumed Terrorists!"},"content":{"rendered":"

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”\u00a0 Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In the end, opt out fizzled out<\/a>.\u00a0 In hindsight, the Wednesday before Thanksgiving — the busiest travel day of the year — was probably not the best day to stage a protest against the federal government’s new, intrusive “security” measures at our nation’s airports<\/a>.\u00a0 Most folks who are flying today simply want to get from point A to point B as fast as possible without having any more delays than are customary on Thanksgiving Eve.<\/p>\n

However, just because most air travelers complied with the TSA’s stepped-up use of body scanners or pat-downs (hey, everybody wanted to get to grandma’s house on time), the Transportation Security Authority, part of the U.S. Government’s Department of Homeland Security, should not conclude that Americans will continue to give up their Fourth Amendment rights just to be able to travel by air.<\/p>\n

In one of the most clear and\u00a0forceful\u00a0articles yet written about the TSA’s enhanced security measures that are being used at our nation’s airports, Andrew McCarthy at National Review Online presents a\u00a0compelling (and I think, devastating) argument about\u00a0why\u00a0ordinary Americans’ Fourth Amendment rights are being violated.<\/p>\n

With a pithy\u00a0title, “TSA\u00a0Is\u00a0Terrible,” <\/a><\/em>McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor, lays out his case why the\u00a0body scanners and\u00a0enhanced pat-downs violate the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition against “unreasonable searches and seizures.”\u00a0 McCarthy writes:<\/p>\n

“Imagine, though, if the marshals had said: \u201cLet\u2019s just cavity-search everyone \u2014 after all, you never know.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0In essence, that is exactly what the Transportation Safety Administration is doing with its perverse \u2014 in every sense of the word \u2014 security procedures. At a number of the nation\u2019s most heavily trafficked airports, in the midst of the Thanksgiving holiday, when people routinely fly in order to be with faraway loved ones, the TSA is saying: Let\u2019s suspect everyone of being a terrorist, no matter how groundless the suspicion, and move immediately to the most intrusive search procedures in our toolkit.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I would encourage everyone to read McCarthy’s entire article to\u00a0get a better understanding of the Constitutional\u00a0(and common sense)\u00a0balance\u00a0between security and liberty that we must demand as American citizens.\u00a0 The Thanksgiving holiday will be over in just a few days.\u00a0 Christmas is coming.\u00a0 Americans will continue to use air travel to get to “faraway loved ones.”\u00a0 <\/em>Are we willing to be presumed terrorists in order to exercise our right to travel by air (or car or train)?\u00a0 We shall see.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”\u00a0 Fourth…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[21,22,34],"tags":[68,90,400,703,762,881,967,997,1006,1014,1023],"class_list":["post-1237","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-freedoms","category-government","category-politics","tag-air-travel","tag-andrew-mccarthy","tag-fourth-amendment","tag-national-review-online","tag-pat-downs","tag-scanners","tag-thanksgiving","tag-transportation-security-administration","tag-tsa","tag-u-s-constitution","tag-unreasonable-searches-and-seizures"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1LP7G-jX","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1237","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1237"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1237\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}