Tornado Alley (PROG)

[StephanieVanbryce]

Rand Paul: Drama Queen Or Secret Terrorist?



Toilet-obsessed Rand Paul [ http://tbogg.firedoglake.com/2011/03/10/rand-pauls-toilet-is-all-plugged-up-with-dead-fetuses-and-poop/ ] set off a metal detector at the Nashville airport this morning (possibly because he has too much iron in his poop) while on his way to attend a Forced Pregnancy rally (or as we call it: A Flock O’ K-Lo’s) and, to continue the theme, he proceeded to lose shit having his communications people report that he had been “detained”by the TSA.

Max Read at Gawker pretty much sums it up: [ http://gawker.com/5878427/rand-paul-is-so-full-of-shit-about-being-detained-by-the-tsa ]

Despite the most fervent wishes of the libertarian conservative corner of the internet, Paul was not seized by Barack Obama’s Black Panther stormtroopers and tortured for information about the supposed “gold standard”: he set off the body scanner (something in his knee, apparently), which requires a pat down; he refused the pat down, and was escorted out of the security area. He took another flight later. Inconvenient? Sure. Silly? Absolutely? But Rand Paul was not detained.

Not that you could tell that to Paul’s Twitter fan club, which accused the TSA of violating Article I, Section VI of the Constitution. [ http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articlei ] (Get real, guys.) Even Paul’s chief of staff doubled down [ http://dailycaller.com/2012/01/23/report-tsa-detains-sen-rand-paul-in-nashville/ ] on the stupid, self-righteous language of “detention”:

Sen. Rand Paul’s chief of staff Doug Stafford responded to the TSA’s claim that the senator was “not detained at any point.” “Well, I don’t know what bureaucrat manuals call it, but: an innocent American citizen who was offering to cooperate while also attempting to stop an invasive search was not allowed to proceed without complying,” Stafford said in an email to TheDC.

That sound you just heard was my eyes rolling so far back in my head that they fell out. We don’t love the TSA security procedures, but if let’s please not embarrass ourselves by pretending that Paul did something brave or noble here, or that the TSA reacted in an unexpected or particularly troubling way. Rand Paul wasn’t “detained”; the TSA is not Agent Smith; you are not Neo; and if the worst way your civil rights have ever been violated is by having your body touched by a government employee while you wait to board a plane, you are pretty lucky.

Libertarians are a people constantly in search of issues to be self-righteous about. This is the problem of a political movement about “freedom” peopled largely by white men with college degrees and above-average incomes: there’s not a lot of freedom they don’t already have, and not a lot of situations where their civil rights are being potentially trampled. The TSA is a wonderful thing for contemporary American libertarianism; it’s one of not many places where a upper middle class Linux engineer can actually stand off against an invasive government.

If the Fonzie of Freedom had a Drudge siren, it would probably be wailing like a banshee right now…. right above a plea for donations because the
invisible hand of the market won’t return Fonzie’s calls.

http://tbogg.firedoglake.com/2012/01/23/rand-paul-drama-queen-or-secret-terrorist/