Matthew Boyle
The Daily Caller
1/23/2012
Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul’s press secretary Moira Bagley tweeted on Monday that Transportation Security Administration officials were detaining her boss in Nashville, Tenn.
“Just got a call from @senrandpaul,” Bagley tweeted at about 10 a.m. on Monday. “He’s currently being detained by TSA in Nashville.”
Texas Congressman and current Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul – Sen. Rand Paul’s father – placed a post on Facebook about the news as well. “My son Rand is currently being detained by the TSA at the Nashville Airport,” Ron Paul posted. “I’ll share more details as the situation unfolds.”
Ron Paul adds, via Twitter, that the TSA detained his son “for refusing full body pat-down after anomaly in body scanner.”
Sen. Rand Paul’s Facebook page has a post about the incident too. “Senator Paul is being detained at the Nashville Airport by the TSA,” Sen. Rand Paul’s Facebook post reads. “We will update you as the situation develops.”
Sen. Rand Paul’s chief of staff Doug Stafford told The Daily Caller the Senator “was detained by the TSA after their scanner had an ‘anomaly’ on the first scan.”
“He offered to go through again,” Stafford said in an email. “The TSA said he could only have a full body pat down. He would not consent to it. He offered to go through the scanner again. The situation is ongoing.”…
The article continues at The Daily Caller.
H/T SayAnythingBlog where Rob Port writes:
…Ironically enough, the Supreme Court just ruled today that law enforcement must obtain a warrant before they track a person or vehicle’s movements via GPS.
If the cops can’t track you via GPS, what makes anyone think they can rub down your private areas just because you want to get on an airplane?
Says the Supreme Court, this morning, in United States v. Jones. Scalia writes the privacy-protecting opinion, joined by Roberts, Kennedy, Thomas, and Sotomayor…
…There’s no dissent, but Alito writes a concurring opinion which is joined by Ginsburg, Breyer, and Kagan. Alito characterizes the majority of using “18th-century tort law” to interpret the 4th Amendment and says the question should be analyzed in terms of reasonable expectations of privacy.
Read the whole thing.
Update 2: The White House sides with TSA in Rand Paul standoff
The White House is standing by the Transportation Security Administration in its standoff with Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and his father, Republican presidential candidate Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas)
The elder Paul called the TSA a “police state” Monday after Sen. Paul was reportedly detained by TSA after he refused to take a pat-down from TSA officials at the Nashville International Airport.
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said Monday that he didn’t have any reaction to Paul’s comment about “police state.”
But Carney sided with the TSA saying, “I think it is absolutely essential that we take necessary actions to ensure that air travel is safe.”…
Update 3: Why Rand Paul refused a TSA pat down, missed flight to D.C.
…In September 2011 Congressional hearing, Sen. Paul said, “When the TSA head [John S] Pistole was here, he said, well, we need to do these invasive searches … absolutely, we have to because an 8-year old in Kandahar exploded a bomb. To me that shows a bit of naivete to think that somehow there’s a similarity between an 8-year old in Kandahar and an 8-year old in Bowling Green, Kentucky.”
Paul added: “We have to bring some sense to what we’re doing in this country … we treat everybody equally as a terrorist suspect.”…
Also, Sen. Rand Paul Questions Invasive TSA Searches – 06/22/11 Sen. Paul spoke at a full committee hearing of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee regarding invasive TSA searches.
Update 4: Video: Rand Paul on His TSA Experience
