INTEL SOURCE LINK: thenewamerica.com
by Alex Newman
U.S. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) missed a flight to Washington, D.C., this morning after being detained by screeners with the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) for refusing a full-body pat-down, his staff said. The incident happened at the Nashville, Tennessee, airport when a so-called “naked-body scanner” found some sort of anomaly around the conservative Senator’s knee.
Sen. Paul offered to go through the scanner again to resolve any concerns TSA screeners may have had. He also exposed the relevant portion of his leg to prove that there was nothing there. But the TSA insisted on the full-body pat down.
Sen. Paul refused to submit to what he has in the past referred to as an “invasive” procedure. And the TSA refused to back down.
According to Paul, he was briefly detained by TSA screeners in a small cubicle. He was also prohibited from catching his flight to Washington, where he was supposed to speak at the March for Life rally and vote in the Senate later in the afternoon.
The freshman Senator was eventually escorted from the area by local police, a TSA official told CBS News. He was finally allowed to catch a later flight after a subsequent TSA screening was conducted “without incident,” according to the agency.
Sen. Paul spoke out about the incident at the scene, explaining that he did not have any medical issues that would have set off the TSA scanner. “There is no problem. It was just a problem with their machine. But this is getting more frequent, and because everybody has to have a pat-down, it’s a problem,” Sen. Paul told reporters at the airport, noting that he did not want special treatment because he is a Senator. “I think we need to treat everybody with dignity.”
As usual, the TSA offered few details about what is quickly growing into another scandal for the embattled screening bureaucracy. The agency also claimed Sen. Paul was not “detained” but was merely prevented from boarding his flight.
Read Full Article…
Sen. Paul Takes on TSA
PDF
