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Senator Blacklisted by No-Fly List
sig writes "Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA) was turned down for a flight from Washington, D. C. to Boston because his name turned up on the TSA No-Fly list. He eventually got on a flight, but was again denied on his way back to D.C. It took 3 weeks of calls to Tom Ridge and the Department of Homeland Security for the ordeal to get straightened out. But what are ordinary citizens supposed to do if the Secretary of Homeland Security won't take their calls?" There's also a New York Times story.
What makes you think your name needs to sound "kind of Middle Eastern" to make it onto the "no-fly" list? Your predjudices, perhaps?
Is that you? Nixon used every power at his disposal, from the FBI to the IRS to the CIA, in order to intimidate and even imprison his enemies. Look at what he did to Tim Leary: got him sentence to over 10 years in a federal prison for having, IIRC, less than two grams of marijuana in his car.
There were plenty of *allegations* made about Clinton and the IRS, but like 99.9% of the allegations made about him they turned out to be Dudge fodder and usually outright lies.
I have a muslim name (although personally an athiest) and every flight is
a fucking hell. I was kept in a glass booth for an hour, had my ID taken
away, asked questions and basically humilated.
It is OK when I am travelling alone, but it gets ugly when I am "randomly"
selected from amidst my coworkers and business partners.
THere are 2 issues wth your reasoning (don't know if it was meant to be cynical and just repeating how some people in government seem to think..)
1. The constitution and bill of rights may define some rights for US citizens, but are based on the idea that many such rights are not given by that bill or the constitution but confirmed. Those rights exist due to being human, not because the constitution or bull of rights grants them. Due process is one of those.
2. The USA is a party to the international declaration of human rights. Due process is a part of that as well, and sicne this is an international treaty, it should be considered 'law ' accourding to the USA constitution.
So, it does not matter at all if he was a foreigner or not.
The fact that your government seems to argue along the lines that you presented however is the exact reason why I am not visiting the USA, and haven't visited it ever since that government started with this kind of talk.
So everyone with a name of T. Kennedy is going to have trouble flying. That seems like a pretty fundamental flaw to me. You had better hope one of the suspects doesn't choose YrWrstNtmr as a alias!