We've already profiled Rand Paul on our Tea Party Caucus tour but he made some headlines today. The senator from Kentucky was flying through Nashville airport and when his knee made the security scanner get all wonky the TSA officers told them he would have to be patted down, the standard procedure. Rand Paul objected and made it into a whole scene. We understand the want to speak out when one has been held up by the TSA. It's frustrating, annoying and realistically Rand Paul probably does not look like someone who is about to cause damage to an aircraft through a terrorist attack.
But, this is the day we live in. It would be wrong only to profile Middle Eastern looking men or Muslims, or Sikhs (who are often mistaken for Muslims by uneducated policemen and security workers). If we do not want to slip into a racist form of McCarthyism in today's world than we need to use technology to our advantage and when that technology triggers something then we go to a manual check, regardless of what the traveler looks like. Besides, plenty of terrorist attacks have been perpetrated by middle aged White men. Timothy McVeigh, Ted Kaczynski and Gordon Kahl were all white men that operated in terrorism.
Unfortunately, in another sign of the times this incident became instantly politicized. Republican presidential hopeful and Rand Paul's father, Ron Paul called the TSA a police state. In an interesting and completely unforeseeable twist, the White House has defended the actions of the TSA. In other news the Republicans have declared that it is ok to eat fried chicken on Fridays. The Democrats countered that fried chicken is very unhealthy for you and thus, should only be eaten on Saturdays.
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