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In his court statement Thursday, according to NBC station WDIV of Detroit, Abdulmutallab praised Allah and ranted that his life and the life of Muslims has changed. He said al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and other terrorists the government says were killed are alive. He called his sentencing hearing a day of victory and claimed U.S. attorneys on his case intentionally misquoted him and mishandled his case "to achieve their Hebrew goals." He said the Jews need to be "ripped out of Palestine … the capital of the Muslim world."

A Dallas woman says TSA agents repeatedly asked her to step back into a body scanning machine at DFW International Airport. “I feel like I was totally exposed,” said Ellen Terrell, who is a wife and mother. “They wanted a nice good look.” When Ellen Terrell and her husband, Charlie, flew out of DFW Airport several months ago, Terrell says she was surprised by a question a female TSA agent asked her. “She says to me, ‘Do you play tennis?’ And I said, ‘Why?’ She said, ‘You just have such a cute figure.’” Terrell says she walked into the body...

A Denver woman claims she couldn’t board a flight from Wyoming to Denver because of her gender. Jennifer Winning makes the flight from the small airport of Rock Springs, WY to Denver often, but on January 29th it was different. “They wouldn`t let me get on the plane because I`m female,” Winning said. She said she checked in and arrived at security about 35 minutes before the scheduled departure of her United flight. “They asked if I was on the flight to Denver, I said yes, they said that they couldn`t screen me because they sent all the female TSA...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Jerry on Long Island in New York, welcome to the EIB Network. Hello, sir. CALLER: Rush, mega, mega dittos from New York. Thank you for taking my call. It's a thrill to be speaking to you. RUSH: Thank you, sir, very much. CALLER: A huge thrill. Thank you very much. RUSH: You bet. CALLER: I was telling Snerdley, your opening monologues are usually amazing but this morning's was brilliant, and I think it should be distributed to every high school student in this country. Because it was absolutely conservatism on parade this morning, and if our candidates...

A woman claims she missed her flight because there were no female screeners on duty to search her. Jennifer Winning of Colorado said she checked in for a United flight to Denver at the Rock Springs airport in Wyoming about 35 minutes before the plane was due to leave. But claims she was not allowed to board because the female TSA agents at security had left for the day. 'They wouldn't let me get on the plane because I`m female,' Winning told FOX31 Denver. 'They asked if I was on the flight to Denver, I said yes, they said that...

I think the Department of Homeland Security just called me a terrorist. Not only me, but millions of other law-abiding Americans, not to mention Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, George Washington, Samuel Adams, Alexander Hamilton, and Patrick Henry, among others.

Snips from Excerpt only website: For reasons that have never been publicly explained, a squad of VIPR agents showed up at a Savannah Amtrak station one day …….Everyone who entered the station was thoroughly searched. It didn't seem to matter whether people were getting on trains or getting off trains, or just looking for a place to go to the bathroom. ….freight railroads were having their own problems with the VIPR teams. The TSA demanded that VIPR agents be allowed to enter yards at any hour of the day or night without notice and to watch employees from hidden positions....

PASSENGERS at airports across Australia will be forced to undergo full-body scans or be banned from flying under new laws to be introduced into Federal Parliament this week. In a radical $28 million security overhaul, the scanners will be installed at all international airports from July and follows trials at Sydney and Melbourne airports in August and September last year. The Government is touting the scanning technology as the most advanced available in the world, with the equipment able to detect both metallic and non-metallic items beneath clothing.

A little rag tag group of not more than nineteen airplane hijackers, directed by one evil mastermind from a remote cave in north eastern Afghanistan, terrorized America on September 11, 2001 and literally sent shock waves through the world community that reverberated all the way from New York to Bombay and back! These shock waves set off a scare that hijacked the whole world, and has held us all hostage ever since! 9-11 was more than ten years ago, and even though all of the hijackers are surely dead, and Osama bin Laden is supposedly dead too, nevertheless we are...

Gannett Newspaper - Link Only: http://www.tennessean.com/article/20120201/NEWS/302010106/Rand-Paul-s-airport-run-raises-alarm-over-scanner-accuracy?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|FRONTPAGE

Following the horrific events that transpired on that fateful Tuesday morning in September, the federal government assumed the tremendous responsibility of safeguarding America’s travelers. When establishing the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), the Department of Transportation (and later, the newly formed Department of Homeland Security) ultimately chose between two methods of protection to combat the exponentially growing threat of global and domestic terrorism. Type one consists of a security force that, among an unfortunate list of other failures, identifies a mere 30% of all knives and guns that pass through its security detectors, yet simultaneously views cupcakes, cans of Play-Doh (a...

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...

Gannett Newspaper - Link Only: http://www.tennessean.com/article/20120124/NEWS01/301240020/Rand-Paul-says-Nashville-airport-went-too-far-after-he-refused-pat-down?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|FRONTPAGE

The worst part of this is Jay Carney's vaguely creepy insistence on using bureaucracy lingo in referring to Paul throughout as "the passenger". That's actually a nifty reflection of TSA's philosophy of treating fliers equally badly so long as they're treated equally. We're all random passengers, none of us any more or less a security risk than anyone else. If someone flying in from Saudi Arabia has to submit to a patdown because he set off the scanner, than darn it, a U.S. senator on his way to speak at a rally on the Mall has to submit too. (The...

By Sunlen Miller @sunlenmiller Rand Paul’s Pat-Down Standoff With TSA in Nashville Ends Sen. Rand Paul told his communications director this morning he was being detained by TSA at the Nashville airport. The Twitter account associated with Paul staffer Moira Bagley, @moirabagley, tweeted around 10 a.m., ET, “Just got a call from @senrandpaul. He’s currently being detained by TSA in Nashville.” A TSA spokesman disputed that Paul was ever “detained.” But he was not granted access to the secure area of the airport when he tried to board a flight Monday morning.

No one expects the Spanish Inquisition! Senator Rand Paul was on his way from his home in Bowling Green, Kentucky to Washington, D.C. Monday morning, when he caused some kind of “anomaly” in a body scanner at the airport in Nashville. Agents of the Transportation Security Agency declared that he would have to submit to one of those legendary full-body pat-downs, but before a single rubber glove had snapped into place, Senator Paul refused. He wanted a new scan instead, but the TSA agents really had their hearts set on that pat-down. This ended with Senator Paul parked in a...

The White House is standing by the Transportation Security Administration in its standoff with Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and his father, Republican presidential candidate Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) The elder Paul called the TSA a "police state" Monday after Sen. Paul was reportedly detained by TSA after he refused to take a pat-down from TSA officials at the Nashville International Airport. White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said Monday that he didn't have any reaction to Paul's comment about "police state."

On the list of stupid things the Transportation Security Administration could do for their public image: detaining Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, the politician most anxious to abolish them, is probably right near the top. But that's exactly what just happened, his Communications Director, Moira Bagley has confirmed it in a tweet. Kelly O'Donnell is reporting that aides say Paul was detained when he refused a full-body pat-down, after the scanner went off. Paul lifted his pant-leg to show he had no metal, and asked to be re-screened. He was denied this request.

Sen. Rand Paul told his communications director this morning he was being detained by TSA in Nashville. @moirabagley, the Twitter account associated with Paul staffer Moira Bagley tweeted around 10 a.m., ET, “Just got a call from @senrandpaul. He’s currently being detained by TSA in Nashville.” A spokesman for TSA said the agency was looking into the matter but could not immediately comment. Paul apparently set off an airport security full-body scanner, “on a glitch,” a spokesman in Paul’s office told ABC News. The Paul staffer said TSA agents would not let Paul walk back through the body scanner and...

Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul’s press secretary Moira Bagley tweeted on Monday that Transportation Security Administration officials were detaining her boss in Nashville, Tenn. “Just got a call from @senrandpaul,” Bagley tweeted at about 10 a.m. on Monday. “He’s currently being detained by TSA in Nashville.” Texas Congressman and current Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul – Sen. Rand Paul’s father – placed a post on Facebook about the news as well. “My son Rand is currently being detained by the TSA at the Nashville Airport,” Ron Paul posted. “I’ll share more details as the situation unfolds.” Ron Paul adds, via...

<p>Posted by Ron Paul on his Facebook page: "My son Rand is currently being detained by the TSA at the Nashville Airport. I'll share more details as the situation unfolds."</p>

Steal $40,000 from a bank, and you’ll spend a decade or two in prison. Steal $40,000 from an airplane passenger’s luggage and you’ll get six months — if you’re a Transportation Security Administration employee, that is. On January 10, 44-year-old Coumar Persad and 31-year-old Davon Webb, eight-year veterans of the TSA force at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport, were sentenced to six months in jail and five years’ probation after pleading guilty to having stolen $40,000 from a passenger’s suitcase in January 2011. At the time of the men’s arrest, authorities told CBS New York that the suspects...

The TSA's performance Do you think TSA agents do a good job? Yes No Not Sure

Immediately following two separate strip-searches of grandmothers well into their 80s last year, the Transportation Security Administration initially said they merely followed screening procedures. But in a letter discussing the cases of both Ruth Sherman, 89, and Lenore Zimmerman, 85, the federal agency admitted that their agents deviated from standard practise. While they apologised for the treatment of these two elderly women, both Ms Sherman and Ms Zimmerman stick to their stories and said they were forced to strip in humiliating circumstances.

Those mocking the Transportation Security Administration for recently confiscating a passenger’s cupcake are missing the point says Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. “It’s not that we’re saying that a cupcake, per se, is a dangerous weapon,” Napolitano explained. “But the risk of a random confiscation of any item is a way of throwing a monkey-wrench into a potential terrorist’s plot.” Napolitano also cited the collateral benefit to the TSA from “foraging off the land. You know, Sherman’s march to the sea wouldn’t have been possible if his troops didn’t take opportunities to seize supplies from the inhabitants of Georgia and...

The agency will not retest the machines or airline passengers ... After years of rebuffing health concerns over airport scanners, the Transportation Security Administration plans to conduct new tests on the potential radiation exposure from the machines at more than 100 airports nationwide. But the TSA does not plan to retest the machines or passengers. Instead, the agency plans to test its airport security officers to see if they are being exposed to dangerous levels of radiation while working with the scanners. News of the test leaked out after the TSA issued a request last month to government vendors to...

Under the National Operations Center (NOC)’s Media Monitoring Initiative that emerged from the Department of Homeland Security in November, Washington has written permission to collect and retain personal information from journalists, news anchors, reporters or anyone who uses “traditional and/or social media in real time to keep their audience situationally aware and informed.” According to DHS, the definition of personal identifiable information can consist of any intellect “that permits the identity of an individual to be directly or indirectly inferred, including any information which is linked or linkable to that individual.” RT adds: "Previously established guidelines within the administration say...

TSA collected $400,000 in spare change left by passengers in airports in 2011By Keith Laing - 01/12/12 02:59 PM ET Airline passengers left more than $400,000 at airport security checkpoints operated by the Transportation Security Administration in 2011. TSA found $409,085.56 in spare change last year that was unclaimed by passengers, according to figures released by the agency. Historically, if no one comes back to get the leftover money, it stays with the TSA. A Florida lawmaker is trying to change that, however: Rep. Jeff Miller (R-Fla.) filed a bill in April of 2009 that would require TSA to transfer...

The online magazine Salon has a columnist named Patrick Smith, a former airline pilot who writes about matters aeronautical. Recently he wrote about the peculiar and stupid things that agents of the Transportation Security Administration have confiscated from passengers - including a cupcake, because the frosting was deemed to be a gel. In another incident, the TSA confiscated a "light saber" from a toddler. Smith continues: "In earthly terms a light saber is a toy flashlight covered by a rounded plastic cone. As a 'weapon,' though, it is something that exists only in fantasy. The product neither looks like a...

Two TSA workers who pleaded guilty to stealing $40,000 from a drug mule's luggage were each sentenced to six months in prison today. Coumar Persad and Davon Webb admitted in October that they stole a portion of $170,000 that they found in a passenger's bag. Persad noticed the money as it went through the X-ray machine and told Webb to mark it with tape to identify before it was put onto the American Airlines flight to Buenos Aires. ... Persad, 44 of Jackson Heights, remained unapologetic for his actions and ...

Linky to Video Here

The Transportation Security Administration defended the decision of one of its workers to confiscate a passenger's cupcake Monday, saying the pastry that was taken was not a normal piece of dessert. During the Christmas travel season, when between 1.6 million and 2.3 million people were estimated to have taken a trip by airplane, TSA was heavily criticized for reportedly not allowing a passenger to carry a cupcake through security at Las Vegas's McCarran International Airport. On Monday, the agency said the cupcake in question was in a jar,

The TSA Proves its Own Irrelevance Have you wondered what $1.2 billion in airport security gets you? The TSA has compiled its own "Top 10 Good Catches of 2011": 10) Snakes, turtles, and birds were found at Miami (MIA) and Los Angeles (LAX). I’m just happy there weren’t any lions, tigers, and bears… [...] 3) Over 1,200 firearms were discovered at TSA checkpoints across the nation in 2011. Many guns are found loaded with rounds in the chamber. Most passengers simply state they forgot they had a gun in their bag. 2) A loaded .380 pistol was found strapped to...

I have warned and written about this particular subject for over three years—since before Obama was elected—aka “coronated.“ It is only now that many others finally seem to be getting the message. However, this is not something to be criticized. It is to be applauded, as it means they are finally and inexorably awakening to the truth. They are to be applauded and not insulted. I noticed this morning that—after a few of the latest Obama assaults on the US Constitution and liberties of We-the-People—some in the media

“A lot of people take this job very seriously—any bag I open could be my last,” said Heydrich Thomas, a Transportation Security Administration (TSA) baggage screener who works at New York City's JFK airport and is also local union leader. TSA employees, who work to prevent explosives and other weapons from entering airplanes, have some of the most dangerous jobs in America. According to TSA employee Eric Wood, vice president of American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) Local 1120, TSA employees find approximately 30 guns a week nationwide when searching people’s bags. But despite the dangerous nature of their jobs,...

BUFFALO, NY—U.S. Attorney William J. Hochul, Jr. announced today that Minnetta Walker, 44, of Buffalo, N.Y., who was convicted of conspiracy to defraud the United States, was sentenced to 24 months in prison, to be followed by one year supervised released, by U.S. District Court Judge Richard J. Arcara. Assistant U.S. Attorney Mary Catherine Baumgarten, who handled the case, stated that Walker was employed by the United States Department of Homeland Security, Transportation Security Administration (TSA), as a behavior detection officer, assigned to the Buffalo Niagara International Airport (Buffalo Airport) in Cheektowaga, New York. TSA is responsible for ensuring passenger...

WASHINGTON, Jan. 4, 2012 – President Barack Obama signed a bill into law yesterday to streamline airport screening procedures for service members and their families traveling on official orders. The Risk-based Security Screening for Members of the Armed Forces Act gives the Transportation Security Administration six months to develop and implement a plan to expedite screening services for service members on orders and in uniform and, “to the extent possible, any accompanying family member.” The act, in part, calls for the agency to establish standard guidelines for the screening of military uniform items, such as combat boots. In a statement...

Assemblyman Tim Donnelly was cited today for having a loaded .45-caliber handgun in his carry-on bag at the Ontario airport. The Twin Peaks Republican was stopped at a security checkpoint about 6:45 a.m. and eventually cited and released by airport police, said Nico Melendez, spokesman for the federal Transportation Security Administration. Donnelly's spokeswoman, Cassandra Joiner, said the citation is for possession of an unloaded handgun. But Melendez said the .45-caliber Colt Mark IV had four rounds in its magazine and a spare magazine with five additional rounds. "When he was packing to leave, he had forgotten that it was in...

As I was reading an email string about tactics to get mainstream Americans aware of what the TSA is actually doing, it occurred to me that I have never told my entire story. So here goes. My saga starts when I was four years old and had my right leg amputated at the knee. Fast-forward to 2004, when I had a spate of business trips to Washington, DC and Texas. 12/1/2004: I walked up to a DTW (Detroit) security checkpoint and announced I had an artificial leg. Without being wanded I was taken aside by two women to Concourse A,...

MIDLAND, Texas (AP) -- A man was detained Saturday after trying to go through a security checkpoint at a Texas airport with explosives in military-grade wrapping, federal and local officials said. The man was stopped at a security checkpoint at the Midland International Airport about 9 a.m. and taken into custody by the FBI, they said. FBI spokesman Mike Martinez declined to say whether the man was in military uniform or how many explosives were found in the bag. He said he did not know where the man was being held, saying he was at either the airport or at...

An all-too-familiar sight at LAX and the rest of the nation’s airports will soon be coming to the city’s busiest train station. KNX 1070′s Pete Demetriou reports rail passengers have started seeing Transportation Security Administration on patrol at Union Station on a more frequent basis. As many as 25 VIPR (Visible Intermodal Prevention & Response) teams began patrolling train stations nationwide last summer conducting an estimated 9,300 “suspicionless” spot searches of travelers. The agency has said the presence of officers with explosive detection dogs, radiation monitors and other devices will act as a deterrent in the nation’s busiest travel hubs.

Robert Spencer links to a must-read article written by Charles Mann, in which he documents, with the help of one of America’s top security experts, that all those TSA security measures accomplish nothing, at enormous cost. The expert, Bruce Schneier, call it "Security Theater."

Reporting from Charlotte, N.C.— Rick Vetter was rushing to board the Amtrak train in Charlotte, N.C., on a recent Sunday afternoon when a canine officer suddenly blocked the way. Three federal air marshals in bulletproof vests and two officers trained to spot suspicious behavior watched closely as Seiko, a German shepherd, nosed Vetter's trousers for chemical traces of a bomb. Radiation detectors carried by the marshals scanned the 57-year-old lawyer for concealed nuclear materials. When Seiko indicated a scent, his handler, Julian Swaringen, asked Vetter whether he had pets at home in Garner, N.C. Two mutts, Vetter replied. "You can...

The Transportation Security Administration isn't just in airports anymore. TSA teams are increasingly conducting searches and screenings at train stations, subways, ferry terminals and other mass transit locations around the country... The TSA's 25 "viper" teams — for Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response — have run more than 9,300 unannounced checkpoints and other search operations in the last year. Department of Homeland Security officials have asked Congress for funding to add 12 more teams next year. According to budget documents, the department spent $110 million in fiscal 2011 for "surface transportation security," including the TSA's viper program, and is asking...

Now with family and friends in canada...last night at LAX we went to the idiotic, commie routine of putting our hands on our heads and posed for the x-ray like the rest of the sheep. TSA nazis were in the same mood: yelled at everyone especially to take out ALL ELECTRONICS, place them in the bin etc. There was a very noticeable line of people that AFTER the x-ray, they were still pulled to the side and had to take out every stuff they had in their bags of course, especially the women who had to embarrassingly take out their...

BOSTON -- A Peabody woman says a cupcake she tried to take on a flight with her sparked a potential security threat this week. Rebecca Hains says she was going through security at the airport in Las Vegas when a TSA agent pulled her aside and said the cupcake frosting was “gel-like” enough to constitute a security risk. She said she was able to pass through Logan International Airport security with two cupcakes, but she was stopped on the way back when she tried to return with one of them.

This country's Founding Fathers were a bunch of obnoxious jerks -- and I mean that in the most reverent way. These were men who were fiercely opposed to blind obedience to authority, and who laid their lives on the line to flip it the bird. Oh, how disappointingly -- and dangerously -- far we've fallen. Our Constitutional rights are increasingly being eroded -- at TSA checkpoints, at police stops where citizens are arrested for videotaping, and elsewhere -- and so many Americans are just sitting there blinking like livestock. At the airport this past March, I wasn't one of those...

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.

Released Nov. 16th, 2011 "The analysis of TSA, a federal bureaucracy plagued by significant administrative and operational problems, was prepared by the majority staff of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee." From the report:"“TSA wasted $39 million to procure 207 Explosive Trace Detection Portals . . . deployed only 101 because the machines could not consistently detect explosives . . . [and] . . . paid the Department of Defense $600 per unit to dispose of the useless machines.” In addition: “TSA deployed 500 Advanced Imaging Technology (AIT) devices in a haphazard...

A scare at the busiest airport in the world, as a gun goes off at a security checkpoint at Hartsfield-Jackson airport in Atlanta. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that TSA agents spotted a .22-caliber Magnum in a bag that was going through the x-ray machine on Sunday. It turns out the gun was loaded with small game pellet ammunition known as "snake" bullets. An Atlanta police officer who responded to the scene was trying to unload the gun when it went off. No one was injured, but the officer wrote in his report: “I was grazed by a pellet fragment on...