Anybody who thinks the Supreme Court will protect us from the TSA is dreaming. More accurately, he has his head somewhere other than above his shoulders.
People keep claiming in comments here at TSA News that (paraphrasing): “We just need a case to make it all the way to the Supreme Court. Then the 4th Amendment can be upheld.”
To which I’ve been saying: “Yeah, right.”
And now here comes Justice Antonin Scalia, supposed defender of the sanctity of the Constitution, to tell us where he stands. In reference to the NSA’s widespread, illegal surveillance, with fellow Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg at his side, Scalia says that freedoms aren’t absolute. Fair enough. I agree with him that freedoms aren’t absolute; there are limits to everything in life. It’s called reality.
But Scalia goes on to say (and yes, it pains me to link to the execrable Breitbart, but c’est la vie):
” . . . As Ruth has said there are very few freedoms that are absolute. I mean your person is protected by the Fourth Amendment, but as I pointed out when you board a plane someone can pass his hands all over your body. That’s a terrible intrusion, but given the danger that it’s guarding against it’s not an unreasonable intrusion. And it can be the same thing with acquiring this data that is regarded as effects. That’s why I say its foolish to have us make the decision because I don’t know how serious the danger is in this NSA stuff, I really don’t.”
There you have it—TSA clerks pawing your genitals is “a terrible intrusion, but given the danger that it’s guarding against, it’s not unreasonable.” One can only imagine Scalia, sitting around the Thanksgiving table, chiding a furious relative who’d just been groped that “It’s not unreasonable.”
So suck it up, peons. The fact that planes weren’t being blown out of the sky left and right in all the years before we were being groped doesn’t matter. Always remember: facts don’t matter. I don’t know how many times I have to say it. Just put your head down, shut your mouth, and get on the damn plane.
Lisa Simeone is a writer, editor, political activist, Glamour Girl, and radio host. She publishes ABombazine, where this originally appeared.
I wonder if Antonin (Anthony, Tony, Antonio) whatever Scalia has boarded a commercial airliner, (does he?) … I wonder if he is exempt from being groped, or if failing to recognize the Tony, any good ole TSA agent has or will ever grope the Tony … I wonder if he would be there saying the same thing “a terrible intrusion, but given the danger that it’s guarding against, it’s not unreasonable.” I wonder if a groping of his genitals would make him reverse his statement. I wonder if … maybe he likes being groped! So. There you have it.