Texas Joins Other States in Revolting Against the Revolting TSA Pat-Downs

"This bill is about saying 'enough is enough.'", stated Rep. David Simpson of Longview, Texas.  He is sponsoring House Bill 1937, a bill that will make intrusive bodily searches a second degree felony when the person conducting the pat-down has no probable cause to suspect that the person being searched has committed a crime.  Representative Simpson said "We've turned from prudent caution to ridiculous, excessive measures."  This bill has garnered at least one-third support in the Texas House of Representatives, with both Democrats and Republicans supporting the measure.  Support for the measure is growing daily within the Texas Legislature.  http://www.wfaa.com/news/texas-news/Airport-patdowns-118450419.html

Most of us who travel the airways do not feel safer because of the intrusive and humiliating bodily searches conducted by security guards who have little training in the constitutionality of the searches they are charged to conduct.  We would not tolerate trained, commissioned, and sworn police officers searching us before we could enter an airplane.  But our Government, through the Office of Homeland Security, has forced us to accept such treatment from poorly trained and poorly paid employees as the price to be payed for the privilege to travel by airplane.  There have been many isolated incidents of people refusing to submit to the bodily searches, and refusing to go through the X-ray booth, the danger of which has yet to be fully documented.  These people were usually refused permission to board the airplane, although some were actually arrested on fairly serious federal charges such as interfering with the operation of a common carrier.  Texas House Bill 1937 would turn the tables on TSA employees, effectively forcing the agency to return to pre-9/11 measure of screening carry-on bags and simply observing passengers.  In those days, a suspicious-looking passenger was referred to a REAL policeman who was able to discern if probable cause existed for further and intrusive bodily searches.

House Bill 1937, a measure of common sense, would of course only apply in Texas airports; however, similar legislation is being considered by the law-making bodies of New Jersey and Vermont.  I commend all three state legislatures for standing up for the rights of the states (the people who reside in a state) by letting the United States government know that, just as states can't ignore the Constitution, neither can the Federal Government.  We usually see the federal government in the role of stepping in and forcing states to honor the Constitution, as in the days of the blatant state and local civil rights violations of years past.  Now at least three states are telling the federal government that the trampling of Constitutional rights in the name "homeland security" will no longer be tolerated.  I hope that the legislative bodies of the other several states will exercise their initiative and join Texas, New Jersey, and Vermont in setting aside these gross federal civil rights violations fostered through Homeland Security (via the USA PATRIOT Act, of course) so that some degree of sanity in transportation security will prevail.