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Rand Paul: Patdown victim or special pleader

I find the TSA’s procedures to be often ridiculous. But barring further information that would put his decision to refuse a patdown in a better light, it looks to me like Sen. Rand Paul was being prissy: Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) was escorted away from a Transportation Security Administration checkpoint at the Nashville airport on Monday after […]

I find the TSA’s procedures to be often ridiculous. But barring further information that would put his decision to refuse a patdown in a better light, it looks to me like Sen. Rand Paul was being prissy:

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) was escorted away from a Transportation Security Administration checkpoint at the Nashville airport on Monday after declining to undergo an enhanced security pat-down, the agency said. He later completed a different screening process and boarded a different flight than originally scheduled.

Contrary to some news reports, TSA agents never detained Paul after the incident, the agency said.

An alarm sounded as the senator passed through a body-imaging machine Monday, and he “refused to complete the screening process in order to resolve the issue,” the TSA said in a statement. “Passengers, as in this case, who refuse to comply with security procedures are denied access to the secure gate area. He was escorted out of the screening area by local law enforcement.”

Look, if you or I walk through an airport checkpoint, and the alarm goes off — as it has done with me before — we’re going to get patted down. That’s fair. The things people don’t like about the TSA are the random patdowns, especially when they target people like little old ladies. Does anybody believe that if an alarm goes off when you go through the metal detector at the airport, that you should be able to refuse a security patdown? If Rand Paul were a Muslim cleric, not a famously libertarian US Senator, would anybody defend his refusal? I wouldn’t, and neither would you. So why should a U.S. senator receive special treatment? Are there two sets of airport security laws in this country, one for senior American politicians, and another for the rest of us?

On the other hand, watch this clip from a James Fallows post about the Paul incident. Paul sounds reasonable. Fallows suggests that Paul might have run afoul of some TSA agents who were behaving unreasonably. I have never had that experience, but I don’t travel nearly as often as Fallows does. Fallows writes:

This is one of the great airport-by-airport variations in TSA demeanor, in my experience. In some — for instance, BWI on our last trip through there — you sense that you’re dealing with human beings trying to apply the rules but not rub in their authority. At some other places, you have officers who look as if they’re waiting for a traveler to provoke them by showing “attitude.” TSA-Dulles usually seems that way to me, though friends in New York tell me that if I traveled through JFK more, I’d have it at the top of my list.

So, I think it’s possible that Sen. Paul may have been pushed around by TSA agents on an authority trip. But I think it’s equally possible that Sen. Paul tried to play the authority card on them. I want to know more details about the incident. Please post more in the combox thread if you find them.

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