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Fly the friendly skies, but leave your First Amendment at home
Ok, so this needs to be taken with a huge grain of salt, since it comes from a post on a bulletin board over at flyertalk (which calls itself “the world’s most popular frequent flyer community”). But it certainly has the ring of truth to it, and it’s damning enough to be worth sharing (damning, yes; surprising, no).
So this dude was traveling out of the Milwaukee airport yesterday, and got to take advantage of the new leniency regarding taking liquids on-board (as I imagine you’ve heard, we’re now allowed small amounts of liquids and gels, with their containers put into a clear quart-sized plastic bag). He decided to label his clear bag with a nice little political statement: “Kip Hawley is an Idiot.” Kip Hawley being the current director of the TSA. You can read this chap’s fully detailed recounting of the story here, but the gist is that he was held-up by TSA agents and local sheriffs deputies for about a half-hour, just because he had this on his little bag. He wasn’t arrested or issued any citation, although he was harassed a bit and faced a threat of having his little baggy confiscated.
The highlight of the story, however, is when a TSA agent informed him that while he has First Amendment rights “out there,” he has no such rights “in here.” Nice, right?
