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TSA Shuts Down Airport, Detains 11 After "Science Project" Found
OverTheGeicoE writes "A group of students and a professor were detained by TSA at Dallas' Love Field. Several of them were led away in handcuffs. What did they do wrong? One of them left a robotic science experiment behind on an aircraft, which panicked a boarding flight crew. The experiment 'looked like a cell phone attached to a remote control car with some exposed wires protruding.' Of course, the false alarm inconvenienced more than the traveling academics. The airport was temporarily shut down and multiple gates were evacuated, causing flight delays and diversions."
I'm as against the TSA as anyone.
But come on. Considering what was found, why should any authority there NOT freak out? The flight crew did.
It's really annoying it had such a large impact but in this case it was I think fully warranted. Even though I think they should have been allowed to enter the plane with the whole kit unscanned, once they left it behind all bets are off.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Not necessarily. Just up the road at the DFW airport a woman got a handgun past the ever vigilant TSA.
http://www.wfaa.com/news/local/TSA-Woman-slips-through-DFW-Airport-checkpoint-with-gun-137567048.html
Better question - if they let it on the plane, then why didn't TSA ask the flight crew what the thing was instead of treating it like a bomb? Seems somebody should have already known it was on the plane during the flight.
I hate to admit it, but I'd have to agree on this. They did exactly what I would want them to do. However, I'd have stopped short of arresting to poor bastard who let the thing on the plane. A harmless device and a honest mistake. It could happen to anyone, and it has happened to me.
I left my hat on a plane. I realized it as soon as I got through the gate. I informed the gate lacky and they called up the flight crew. They could not find it (even though I told them exactly where it was), after a bit of haggling with the guy at the gate, I was allowed to re-board the plane (with out escort) and retrieve my hat. The unescorted bit confused me a little. Still does.
This still does not make like TSA any less.
Why is it that most of the people that I encounter seem to have been shat from the Sphincter of Mediocrity?
Someone should've offered her a newspaper. Years before she wrote that book, the US government had already relocated and interned 110 000 innocent civilians - 62% of which American citizens.
Dilbert RSS feed
Lots of Americans hate America.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
If it was a White Extremest Christian my money is on property damage, or arson at most.
Yep, everyone refers to the 168 dead from the Oklahoma City bombing as "property damage" and no one ever refers to Timothy McVeigh as a terrorist.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/oklahoma/stories/ok042597.htm
http://edition.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0106/09/pitn.00.html
http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=93055&page=1
Unless you don't count CNN, ABC and the Washington Post as "MSM".
You do realize that most of her "dystopian" writing was not dire predictions of things to come, but simply descriptions of things she had seen while young, right? That was exactly the sort of thing she was writing about (and far, far worse, in the early USSR).
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Terrorists have always been forced to disguise their bombs. That didn't help the people on Pan Am flight 103. The reason the two terrorists you mention failed was that they tried to light something on fire with other people around. The TSA had no role whatsoever in foiling those plots.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
If everybody on Slashdot gets an old phone, opens it up and leaves it on a plane...
Then everybody on slashdot will get detained, probed and then TSA will request additional funding based on the spikes in detaining/probing/confiscations.
Seriously, there is no positive outcome here. I think those people were handcuffed to create an appearance of hard work. TSA hasn't caught a single terrorist in over a decade of existence. The fact that they are still getting (increased) funding is hard to imagine.
Poor word choice on my part.
I was trying to appeal to the metaphysical position that a person's worthiness of life doesn't appreciably change in the moments before birth vs. the moments after birth.
I tried to efficiently state that point by using the word "infant" to refer to fetuses. But perhaps a wordier version of my point was warranted.
Then everybody on slashdot will get detained, probed and then TSA will request additional funding based on the spikes in detaining/probing/confiscations. Seriously, there is no positive outcome here.
No positive outcome? I dare say you're wrong.
Suppose that 25% of TSA employees are women (being conservative here). This means that, when you'll be groped, there's a 25% chance that it'll be a chick who does that. And 1 chance in 4 of that happening is pretty damn good for Slashdot audience.
Nixon put in some legistation to control air pollution and was trying to push the sort of health care bill that Obama had in mind before it was watered down, turned into an insurance company cash cow and it appears sabotaged by the people that it insisted it be turned into an insurance company cash cow. Crook or not there were many a lot worse than him and some were bigger crooks (Ford for example took a big bribe from the Pesident of Indonesia and started the decline of the US intelligence community). Reagan even sold weapons to the same terrorist group that had earlier killed a lot of Marines in Lebanon.