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Testing, 1, 2, 3, testing. Jihadists never go on furlough. While shutdown theater preoccupies Washington, terror plotters remain on the clock. The question is: Will America keep hitting the post-9/11 snooze button? At Los Angeles International Airport, two dry ice bombs exploded this week, and two others were found in a restricted area of the airport. According to the Los Angeles Times, the devices "appeared to be outside the terminal near planes where employees such as baggage handlers and others work on the aircraft and its cargo." That reminds me: It's been more than a year since watchdogs warned Capitol...

Travelers who attempt to make a joke about strict security procedures at airports have been warned they face arrest. A loudspeaker announcement made by the Transport Security Administration warns the public: 'Any inappropriate remarks or jokes concerning security may result in your arrest.' Concerned passenger Matt Miller recorded the loudspeaker message while passing through George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, Texas.

The unidentified 9-year-old was able to get past airport security and screening agents before touching down in Nevada. His presence aroused flight attendants' suspicions and they alerted authorities, who took him into custody upon landing.A 9-year-old boy snuck past airport security and boarded a flight from Minneapolis to Las Vegas without appearing to have ever held or shown a boarding pass according to an airport official. Despite several layers of security and fear of global threats to the nation's airports, the unaccompanied child "went through the entire security screening process" Thursday without a hitch, according to Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport...

FULL TITLE: "Turkish bodybuilder dressed in his underpants and clutching bag of marijuana and ecstasy held party-for-one onboard Merkel's private jet" A man wearing just his underpants and high on drugs managed to board an empty German government jet used by Chancellor Angela Merkel. Clutching a bag full of marijuana and ecstasy pills, the 24-year-old danced on the wing of the plane, sprayed foam around and pushed buttons in the cockpit of the jet in Cologne Airport. The bodybuilder, believed to be of Turkish descent and named only as Volkan T, even released the inflatable emergency slide of the Airbus...

Several times every day, at airports across the country, passengers are trying to walk through security with loaded guns in their carry-on bags, purses or pockets, even in a boot. And, more than a decade after 9/11 raised consciousness about airline security, it’s happening a lot more often. In the first six months of this year, Transportation Security Administration screeners found 894 guns on passengers or in their carry-on bags, a 30 percent increase over the same period last year. The TSA set a record in May for the most guns seized in one week—65 in all, 45 of them...

The “nude scanners” are gone. The full-body scanners that used X-rays to create what looks like a nude image of passengers have been packed away and removed from airports across the country. The 250 or so machines were removed about two weeks ago, before the June 1 deadline set by Congress. But privacy advocates aren’t satisfied, noting that the Transportation Security Administration is still using full-body scanners that employ a different technology. … The TSA now relies solely on millimeter wave scanners, which previously generated similar nude images but have been upgraded to portray a generic figure on which they...

A traveler from Saudian Arabia was reportedly arrested after arriving at Detroit Metropolitan Airport with a pressure cooker. On Saturday, Hussain Al Kwawahir, who flew from Saudi Arabia through Amsterdam, allegedly told authorities that he was in the U.S. to visit his nephew who attends the University of Toledo. But The Detroit News also claims that he will be arraigned on Monday in federal court for purportedly lying to a Customs and Border Protection Agent about the pressure cooker and for allegedly using an altered passport. When asked about the passport, which had a missing page, Al Kwawahir apparently told...

Houston police confirm shots fired at Bush Intl. Airport; local media report victim in Terminal B

A worker at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport has been charged with stealing shotguns, revolvers and other weapons from the checked luggage of passengers who had connections through the busy Twin Cities airport. David Vang, 23, of St. Paul faces 11 felony counts, including 10 counts of theft of a firearm. He will be making his first court appearance April 25 in Hennepin County. … Several boxes containing firearms, a crossbow, iPads, laptops, mobile phones, jewelry and other electronics were removed from Vang’s apartment, the complaint said. Authorities said he had 716 stolen items, valued at more than $84,000. …

Small knives are set to be permitted in carry-on luggage on flights, in a change to current guidelines announced by the TSA today. Knives with blades no more than 2.36 inches in length from tip to where the blade meets the handle or hilt will be approved for carry-on. The blade must be no more than half an inch in width. The TSA also announced toy bats and sporting equipment such as hockey sticks and golf clubs will also be allowed on board aircraft. …

Thanks to Google Earth and puzzling new TSA rules, all you need to know to get on a plane these days is the color of your house. Traveling for the holidays? No need to fear missing your plane because you’ve lost your government issued I.D.! You can fly without it—as long as you know the color of your house. A few weeks ago I lost my wallet, or maybe it was stolen. But I had to fly from Los Angeles to San Francisco, and I didn’t have a single piece of identification—no passport, driver’s license, credit card, work I.D., nothing....

Transportation Security Administration (TSA) checkpoint screeners are receiving training to prepare them for the possibility of a mass shooting at one of the agency’s airport checkpoints, and those TSA personnel are being instructed to “save themselves” should a shooting occur. It is unclear whether the TSA is conducting the reported mass shooting scenario training at airports around the nation or only at the airport where our source, a veteran of the TSA, is assigned. The TSA source claims with obvious concern that his own life, along with the lives of other unarmed TSA personnel, would be in grave danger were...

Suspect had reported to nearby MCRD just three days earlierSource: http://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/Man-Darts-Across-San-Diego-Airport-Runway-187287931.html#ixzz2IHTSRRCm A U.S. Marine recruit faces felony and misdemeanor chargers for jumping over two barbed-wire fences and running on the tarmac of San Diego’s airport. San Diego harbor police got word from the Lindbergh Tower that a man had run on the tarmac by Gate 6 in Terminal 1 at 6:20 a.m. Thursday. He attempted to hide in a service vehicle that belongs to the janitorial department. "He had quite a few cuts on him and at the time that we found him he had actually taken his pants off...

A Republic Airlines flight attendant showed up to work Sunday at Philadelphia International Airport with a loaded gun in her bag that accidentally discharged, US Airways told NBCPhiladelphia.com. A US Airways spokesperson confirmed that the employee headed through airport security at Terminal C around 6:50 a.m ET with a gun inside her carry-on bag. A police officer was called over to check out the gun. That's when it accidentally discharged, the spokesperson said. The bullet went into a TSA break room where an employee was sitting. No one was injured, police said. The flight attendant allegedly told police that she...

A jet-skier who became stranded in Jamaica Bay easily breached the security system at John F. Kennedy International Airport by walking undetected through two runways and into a terminal. Daniel Castillo of Queens swam to shore and then walked past motion sensors and closed-circuit cameras of the airport's state-of-the art Perimeter Intrusion Detection System. The $100 million system is meant to safeguard against terrorists. Castillo climbed an eight-foot-tall perimeter fence and made his way to Terminal 3, according to The New York Post. He approached a Delta Air Lines worker, who alerted authorities, the paper said. The Port Authority of...

The TSA is effectively an unconstitutional, carcinogenic petting zoo. Deep down, we all feel that the airport security system is an FDA-approved rubdown and radiation parlor. But we are busy, rushing to catch flights, and we tell ourselves it is for our “safety.” So, like sheep, we comply. Unconstitutional The TSA security process is in violation of the law of the land, specifically the Fourth Amendment: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported...

According to possible new TSA rules, air travelers may be compelled to "freeze" when ordered to by screeners. The federal safety agency has yet to comment on this policy, but an airline passenger claimed agents recently practiced a drill on his wife. "We heard a "freeze, freeze" or something like this coming from the output side of security (where my wife was), followed by further barking of commands," the man said. "It turns out they were doing a new drill. They want all passengers to freeze on command. My wife told me later that she didn't follow this order fast...

What if Memorial Day reminds us of times when we had more freedom? What if freedom is dying right under our eyes? What if the memory of the past is more fulfilling than the reality of the present? What if the federal government could write any law, regulate any behavior and tax any event, no matter what the Constitution authorized? What if the majority in Congress rejects the idea of limited government and views the Constitution as granting it blanket power to do whatever it can get away with? What if the constitutional prohibition on the government's taking of life,...

Savannah-Chatham police detectives were working with the Beaufort County, S.C., Sheriff’s Office on Wednesday night after a woman’s body was found on the second floor of a Savannah/Hilton Head International Airport economy parking lot earlier in the day.

TSA Unable To Detect 33% Of Land Mines Sent Through Security A mechanical engineer from the Army's Picatinny Arsenal in New Jersey was stopped by TSA officers at Newark Airport after they found two Claymore mines in her bag. This would be a victory for the TSA had they not just let the woman's co-worker through with a similar mine in their checked baggage. Which government agency deserves your scorn, the one whose employees tried to bring anti-personnel mines (even inert ones) on a plane or the one whose employees didn't detect a third of them?

We Must Assure Our Skies Are Both Safe and Friendly Kip Hawley, the Transportation Security Administration's former administrator, fails to acknowledge a November 2011 congressional report documenting that the TSA has become a bloated, 65,000-person bureaucracy larger than the departments of Labor, Energy, Education, Housing and Urban Development, and State, combined ("Why Airport Security Is Broken—And How to Fix It," Review, April 14). It has spent $57 billion since 2002, $2.7 billion of which was spent on training. Yet half of the people it has hired and trained have left the agency. With the highest attrition rate among the federal...

Airport security in America is broken. I should know. For 3½ years—from my confirmation in July 2005 to President Barack Obama's inauguration in January 2009—I served as the head of the Transportation Security Administration. You know the TSA. We're the ones who make you take off your shoes before padding through a metal detector in your socks (hopefully without holes in them). We're the ones who make you throw out your water bottles. We're the ones who end up on the evening news when someone's grandma gets patted down or a child's toy gets confiscated as a security risk. If...

The TSA’s Freudian Craigslist Slip Either someone just attempted the subtlest of jabs at our nation's force of uncomfortably invasive rent-a-cops or the recruiters at the Transportation Security Administration need to invest in a better thesaurus. A job posting on the Ann Arbor, Michigan Craigslist invites would-be screeners to "[b]e part of a imperious security team protecting airports and skies as you proudly establish your future." Imperious, indeed. The Dictionary.com definition of imperious is "domineering in a haughty manner; dictatorial; overbearing." The definition from Google is even better, describing it as "assuming authority without justification." If it was a joke...

Security footage of Sen. Rand Paul after he refused a full body pat-down at the Nashville International Airport on Monday does not show the Kentucky Republican acting “irate,” as the police had described him, according to a report. n the videos, released by the Metro Airport Authority and posted on The Nashville Tennessean, Paul can be seen standing and sitting in a waiting area as he speaks on his cell phone. The Tennessean reported Thursday that the police incident report describes officers responding to a “passenger being irate,” but the footage offers no visible evidence of that behavior. Paul had...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Transportation Security Administration says officers found two throwing daggers hidden in a hollowed-out book at a checkpoint at Reagan-Washington National Airport. A TSA spokesman says a passenger was stopped Monday when officers found the knives in the person's carry-on bag.

Lynsey Addario, the Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times photographer, received an apology from the Israel's Defense Ministry on Monday after IDM officials conducted a strip-search on her last month at a security check point near Gaza. Addario, who is pregnant, had asked Israel border security to refrain from putting her through an X-ray machine out of concern for her unborn child. "Instead," the Associated Press reports, "she was forced through the machine three times as soldiers...

[snip]...One after another, the experts convened by the Food and Drug Administration raised questions about the machine because it violated a longstanding principle in radiation safety — that humans shouldn’t be X-rayed unless there is a medical benefit.

Wanted: More Snoopy Americans By Norma Zager “The most powerful force in the universe is gossip.” Dave Barry As a child I watched Bewitched. One of the characters in the show was Gladys Kravitz, the nosy neighbor who excelled at diligently spying on the Stevens’ residence. As such she saw much more than she ever anticipated, to the chagrin of her long-suffering husband and her own mental health. Her character was intended to portray that one neighbor or family member constantly watching, snooping and collecting information; the local gossip in residence or GIR. Today the New York based Gladys Kravitzes...

BREAKING: Officials are on scene of an aircraft that landed at Reagan National Airport in Washington, DC after a bomb threat was made against the aircraft. Details are still sketchy, however, sources tell BaltimoreJewishLife.com that a K-9 unit has detected a suspicious bag on board the aircraft. The aircraft and area around it has been evacuated. More information on this story will be posted on BaltimoreJewishLife.com when received.

A Pat-Down By Ari Bussel During the many stops of my international flight, I was only stopped in Frankfurt, twice as a matter of fact. In the United States, my suitcases were not even checked, and there were many things in them that might appear suspicious at first glance and would have required a secondary inspection. In Europe, no one paid much attention. I left the airport on foot, toting a carryon heavy enough to contain a bomb, circled the airport and returned. It was only my insistence to check out a certain lounge that twice subjected me to a...

Top Doctors Opt Out Of Airport Security Scans Robert WenzelApril 4, 2011 Dr. Otis Brawley, chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society, takes a pat-down instead of going through a scanner when he travels, reports CNN's Elizabeth Cohen. Dr. Brawley says he's concerned about whether the machines are calibrated and inspected properly. Dr. Karl Bilimoria, a surgical oncology fellow, told Cohen, "I'm a doctor at M.D. Anderson, and I don't want radiation if I can avoid it." M.D. Andreson is one of the top cancer treatment hospitals in the world. "I do whatever I can to avoid the scanner,"...

The TSA has garnered a large amount of criticism ever since it was started. The 9/11 terrorists didn't bring any prohibited items on the plane, so security had no material reason to stop them. Of course, if the government had done its job, the hijackers would have been identified and rounded up before the attack. If we were willing to profile, like the Israeli airline El-Al we might have been more concerned with single males between the age of 18 and 30, from the middle east traveling alone. Profiling scares people though. Somehow, it's racist to acknowledge that some countries,...

The Department of Homeland Security told a federal court that the agency believes it has the legal authority to strip search every air traveler. The agency made the claim at oral argument in EPIC's lawsuit to suspend the airport body scanner program. The agency also stated that it believed a mandatory strip search rule could be instituted without any public comment or rulemaking.

US Politicians Duped By The Brotherhood In the United States, one individual maintained a pretense of "moderation" which would later embarrass the left and the right. According to the testimony of Dr. Michael Waller to the US Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Abdurahman Alamoudi was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. A man born in Eritrea in 1951, he arrived in the US in 1979 and became a naturalized US citizen on May 23, 1996. From 1985 onwards he became involved in many Muslim groups. In 1990 he founded the Washington DC-based American Muslim Council (AMC), which Waller states "has...

Former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura is suing the Department of Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Administration, saying full-body scans and pat-downs at airport checkpoints are violating his rights. Ventura filed his lawsuit Monday in federal court in Minnesota. He says the new security measures violate his right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures.

A spokeswoman for Moscow's busiest airport says 35 people have been killed by an explosion in its international arrivals hall. Domodedovo Airport spokeswoman Yelena Galanova made the statement Monday on Russia's NTV television. Other officials put the death toll at 31 and said about 130 people were injured in the explosion Monday afternoon. President Dmitry Medvedev said it looked like a terror attack and the state RIA Novosti news agency said the blast may have been set off by a suicide bomber.

UPDATE: Mocek has been found not guilty of all four charges. (From another link FR barred me from posting part of the reason for prevailing on the ID issue is he had to submit ID along with a boarding pass just to enter security.... On November 15, 2009, Phil Mocek stepped into the main terminal at the Albuquerque International Sunport planning to board a Southwest Airlines flight bound for SeaTac. He carried with him two pieces of luggage, a boarding pass, and a cell phone capable of recording audio and video. What he didn't have was a valid form of...

STORYMIAMI INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT (WSVN) -- A man has been arrested after, officials said, he caused a security scare at a South Florida airport. On Jan. 11, Miami-Dade Police officers stopped Oluwole Aboyade in the Dolphin parking garage at MIA after he reportedly began taking pictures of sensitive areas at the airport. According to a Miami-Dade Police report, an officer said he became alarmed when he saw Aboyade taking pictures of buildings, surveillance cameras, airport runways and restricted areas. When the police approached the Nigerian national, he said he would remain silent. The police report read, "Mr. Aboyade was observed walking...

JANET’S LAW IS COMING TO TOWN F.R. Duplantier You’d rather opt out, You’d better get scanned, Cause if you opt out You’ll get a cold hand: Janet’s Law is coming to town. She’s lining you up And checking you twice, Couldn’t care less if you’re naughty or nice: Janet’s Law is coming to town. She sees you when you’re naked, She knows what’s in your slacks, She knows that you and grandma could Launch some terrorist attacks! O! You’d rather opt out, You’d better get scanned, Cause if you opt out You’ll get a cold hand: Janet’s Law is coming...

Tim Ely, a retired Army officer who once commanded a military police unit in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, filed an online complaint after a Nov. 20 confrontation at RDU. He was subjected to an intimate pat-down because of a false alarm from the body scanner. After an agent groped around his genitals from in front and from behind, Ely challenged him to explain what sort of anomaly had turned up on his full-body scan. "He said there was something suspicious hanging from between my legs," Ely, 63, wrote in his RDU online comment. "I told him that something suspicious was my...

A university says it will apologise to India’s ambassador to the US after she was pulled from an airport security line and patted down by a security agent in Mississippi. The embarrassing incident, which one state agency official called “unfortunate”, happened a day after sari-clad Meera Shankar had been invited to Mississippi State University during an international studies programme last Friday. ”It was a wonderful programme, maybe the best we’ve had, (but) this stupid incident ruined the whole thing. She said, ‘I will never come back here’,” said Janos Radvanyi, himself a former diplomat and now chairman of the university’s...

A group of six experts recently took on the subject of profiling at an Intelligence Squared U.S. event. It was three against three in an Oxford-style debate on the motion “U.S. Airports Should Use Racial And Religious Profiling". Before the debate, the audience voted 37 percent in favor of the motion and 33 percent against, with 30 percent undecided. Afterward, the group arguing for the motion had shifted the most minds — 49 percent of the audience said that “U.S. Airports Should Use Racial And Religious Profiling,” while 40 percent were against. Eleven percent remained undecided.

A 47 year old gay man was arrested at San Francisco International Airport after ejaculating while being patted down by a male TSA agent. Percy Cummings, an interior designer from San Francisco, is being held without bail after the alleged incident, charged with sexually assaulting a Federal agent.

Asra Nomani argues that the Muslim Community has failed to police itself and that as a Muslim woman she reluctantly feels that it is necessary to use profiling. Nomani from The Daily Beast hits the nail on the head with one statement to CNN, which is that the current security situation is set up more to offend everyone equally than to actually catch terrorists. (continued)

Israel has long held the reputation as home to the world's most stringent airport security procedures. But most passengers aren't frisked, there are no intimately revealing body-imaging scanners, and security experts dismiss as misguided the new, more intrusive American approach that requires pat-downs or highly detailed scans of every passenger. "Taking the bottle of water from the 87-year-old woman at JFK, you will never find an explosive material that is coming from bin Laden," said Shlomo Harnoy, head of the Sdema Group, an Israeli security consultancy that advises airports abroad. "You are concentrating on the wrong thing."

America must focus its finite capabilities on those who crave the destruction of planes and the people who ride them. What would that profile be? Today's threat comes almost exclusively from militant-Islamic males between about 18 and 35 who hail from the Middle East and predominantly Muslim African and south-Asian nations. This profile was not drawn by anti-Muslim bigots, nervous Jews, or paranoid Southern Baptists. The terrorists themselves created this profile. It's past time to employ terrorist profiling to shield Americans from those who want to murder us.

A woman has complained that new US airport security measures saw her picked out for further screening because of her breasts. Eliana Sutherland was flying from Orlando International Airport and said she felt violated by security workers. It was the latest revelation to hit the Transportation Security Administration which imposed the checks and whose officers have been on the receiving end of a series of allegations. Her claims come after thousands of Americans reacted furiously to the imposition of new airport security measures, including full body scans and hands-on patdowns. And experiences like those described by Sutherland could see increased...

Taxpayers must cover most of a $55.3 million settlement approved Tuesday by Cook County to compensate as many as 250,000 people who were strip searched at the county jail, often in mass lineups and even if they were detained for charges as minor as traffic violations. Some of the degrading practices – included strip searches of dozens of men at a time--continued until 2009, years after the county paid out $6.8 million for a similar case filed by women, lawyers for the plaintiffs said. “It was insanity for people . . . to assume that you could do one thing...

Glenn Beck had Luke Tait, the college student who took the infamous video of the TSA agent doing a pat down of the shirtless little boy, on his show this morning to discuss the incident at the airport. During the interview, Beck said that he learned from a ‘refounder’ (Congressional insider) that the little boy didn’t actually set off the metal detectors as the TSA reported, but rather the boy had on a baggy shirt that caught the attention of the TSA and thats why they wanted to do a pat down. Beck said he also learned a detail that...

Since airport security horror stories seem to be the prevalent news item at the moment, Eyeblast released this video Tuesday which shows Adam Savage speaking to an audience at an event called wOOtstock 2.0 in Seattle last May. Savage, of Mythbusters fame, claims that he accidentally passed through one of the new controversial full-body scanners carrying two “12-inch razor blades.”