TSA, Not Winning Any Public Relations Awards This Year

Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, who is expected to become chairman of the House oversight subcommittee responsible for the federal workforce, wrote President Obama demanding that he initiate a probe into why TSA officers followed around Luke Tait, a Utah Valley University student who on Friday recorded a young boy having his shirt removed by his father so that agents could confirm he was not carrying any contraband.

Click here to see the video.

According to an interview Tait gave to The Associated Press, he took the now-viral video of the boy subjected to the skin-baring search at the Salt Lake International Airport because he "realized something crazy was going on." The boy's father removed the child's shirt, apparently in order to prevent the TSA agent from touching the boy, who had been too shy to submit to a pat-down.

While the kid and his father were allowed to go through security, TSA agents came over and questioned Tait about his videotaping the incident and ordered him to delete the video. He refused, but was allowed to go to his gate where, Chaffetz says, TSA agents sat near him and communicated through walkie-talkies until he boarded his flight.


Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/11/22/lawmakers-seek-probe-tsas-pat-training-reported-misbehavior/#ixzz168cdB35j

Such heavy-handedness from minimum wage-caliber federal officials is worrisome. Attempts to intimidate someone acting lawfully--yes, that's what I want from my government.

Update, 11/24/10: You can always count on Eugene Robinson to carry water for a Democratic administration, even if when doing so he splashes it all over the place:

In other words, they want profiling. That's a seductive idea, I suppose, if you don't spend a lot of time worrying about civil liberties.

Worrying about the civil liberties of would-be terrorists is good, worrying about the civil liberties of the everyday people and their families is bad, eh, Eugene?

At least Thomas Sowell has it right, as he so often does:

Meanwhile, this administration is so hung up on political correctness that they have turned "profiling" into a bugaboo. They would rather have electronic scanners look under the clothes of nuns than to detain a Jihadist imam for some questioning.

Yeah, Eugene, what he said.