It happened innocently enough. I took a quick trip to Tampa Bay back when I was engaged to watch some basketball with my friends. It's something I haven't been able to do since my daughter was born. Well, this was back in the winter of 2002 and you know what that meant in terms of airport security. Well, it was a weekend trip, so I didn't check any bags. I guess I should of. Someone considered my cigar cutter a threat. So, the cutter I got for a gift (assuming it cost ten dollars or so) was confiscated.
Fast-forward seven years or so and you can't help but wonder what is going on. Imagine everyone's surprise when they open up their paper to read this story. I got the news on my phone faster than that, but as the details have come out you can't help but scratch your head. Somehow my cigar cutter is a threat ("I'm taking control of this plane, now come over here and put your finger in this hole so I can gain control.") but firecrackers are just fine and dandy?
Somehow we have to laugh it off because the seriousness is enough to make you cry. This guy was on a terror watch list and his father even warned us about him, but he was still allowed to board a plane. Meanwhile, around the same time as my cigar cutter fiasco my wife's grandfather (who died not long after that) was pulled for a random search. This is a guy that could barely walk and suffered from narcolepsy. Maybe I'm just biased, but he seemed hardly the candidate for being a terrorist unless someone planted something on him when he fell asleep in his seat.
I say this as a progressive on a progressive site. This should not be a Democratic or Republican issue. Besides, what few are focusing on is the fact that this guy boarded a plane in Europe. Even if he were on a no fly list it is not automatic that another country follows our wishes. This is part of the problem. As much as people want to point the finger at Obama, this was equally problematic in the Bush years. So, let's sit down as a people and calmly come up with some common sense solutions. There has to be something in between letting any firecracker toting terrorist on board and announcing, "no Muslims allowed."
I say this as someone that has the constitution, Federalist papers, and Common Sense on his Iphone. I love the constitution and am just short of joining the ACLU, but James Madison couldn't have foreseen airplanes much less terrorist endangering them. This is where we have to figure out what those guys meant when they wrote things like the fourth amendment and what they would suggest today. At any rate, while we're figuring that out I would humbly request the Tampa Bay airport to either give me my cutter back or the ten dollars replacement value. You and I both know I wasn't going to keep a plane hostage with that.
I'm not saying this is true, but I heard they discovred a transvestite with a cigar cutter, a pair of nail clippers, AND a sharpened eyebrow pencil. They threw this guy into a detention cell and then interrogateed him under a 200 watt GE floodlight for three hours before he admitted he WAS a cross dresser.
What concerns me is that after the "shoe bomber" incident, we all now have to take off our shoes.
This guy had sewn the explosives into his UNDERWEAR. I don't know about you, but I wouldn't put ANYTHING past the TSA and the Department of Homeland Security.