Please sign this fab TSA petition

Come on, folks, let's get this up to at least 150 signatures. If we do, it'll go live on the main White House petition site. It was written by our perennially creative contributor Chris Bray.

You may recall that we've tried petitions in the past, including one that went nowhere thanks in no small part to the fact that the White House's site went down for several hours and they didn't extend the petition-signing time to account for that. In other words, we got shortchanged.

Let's not let that happen again. This time, the petition is a brilliant satire of the TSA's behavior, especially the recent case of TSA supervisor Maxie Oquendo sexually assaulting a young woman at La Guardia Airport under color of authority.

Come on, let's make this happen! I know most people don't give a shit about this issue in general (believe me, I know it), but you can at least have a little fun with it. Sign the petition here. And then repost, tweet, disseminate however you like far and wide.

LaGuardia TSA agent arrested for sexual assault

UPDATED BELOW. A TSA agent at LaGuardia Airport in New York has been arrested for sexually assaulting a 22-year-old woman. The only reason he was arrested was because he molested her in a bathroom. If he had followed standard operating procedure, he would've molested her at the checkpoint, where it's usually done. 

Give to TSA Watch

The fundraising drive at TSA Watch has been stuck at $6,921 for weeks. The TSA is sexually assaulting people at airports in this country every day. We and many other organizations have been documenting it for years. I don't know what else people need to know in order to care.

Oh, wait a minute -- for some people, getting robbed is more serious than getting sexually assaulted. Okay, fine. The TSA is robbing people at airports in this country every day. 

Judicial Watch finally gets answers in TSA sexual assault lawsuit

Last August I wrote a post reporting that the non-profit civil liberties organization Judicial Watch was suing the TSA to gain access to documents outlining the sexual abuse of travelers at the hands of TSA workers. I said that Judicial Watch was joining a long line of of other organizations and individual people who had also tried to sue the TSA to get information, and that the TSA, predictably, had stonewalled.

TSA rigged system to grope men’s genitals

From KCNC, the CBS affiliate in Denver, comes this completely unsurprising "news": TSA clerks at Denver International Airport deliberately messed with the strip-search scanners to alarm on attractive male passengers so one of the blue-shirted goons could grope them.

No, Virginia, say it ain't so! 

Redditor finally discovers the TSA is abusive

From a thread started at Reddit by someone who is just now discovering that the TSA is abusive. Duh. Sorry, patience is admittedly not one of my virtues, but I really can't take it anymore -- not only the surprise exhibited by people who seem to have been living under a rock for the past, oh, six years, but worse, those who deny, deny, deny what's right in front of their faces.

More TSA Crime - Blogger not updating, so Master List continues here

Blogger is still messed up, so I can't update the Master List of TSA Crimes and Abuses (see tab at top of page). I've tried dozens of times over the past couple of weeks, and no matter how many times I type the info in and hit "Update," it doesn't save the changes. So I'm just going to start continuing the list in posts such as this one.

UPDATE APRIL 9, 2015: I've started a Page 2 of the Master List, so now these incidents have been added:

Man abused by TSA, jailed by cops; TSA agent lies under oath

by LISA SIMEONE on FEBRUARY 4, 2015

HTTP://TSANEWSBLOG.COM/15515/NEWS/MAN-ABUSED-BY-TSA-JAILED-BY-COPS-TSA-AGENT-LIES-UNDER-OATH/

Another TSA agent charged with child sex abuse

by LISA SIMEONE on FEBRUARY 13, 2015

HTTP://TSANEWSBLOG.COM/15568/NEWS/ANOTHER-TSA-AGENT-CHARGED-WITH-CHILD-SEX-ABUSE/

Another TSA sexual predator

by LISA SIMEONE on FEBRUARY 19, 2015

HTTP://TSANEWSBLOG.COM/15583/NEWS/ANOTHER-TSA-SEXUAL-PREDATOR/

Another TSA abuse, another day in the USA

Unfortunately, Blogger is on the fritz and has been for days, so I can't update the Master List of TSA Crimes and Abuses (see menu at top of the page -- Pages 1 and 2 both). I give up. So here's an addition (along with my reply to her) that might someday be added to the list, if Blogger ever gets its act together. From February 2, 2015:

Trish24 • 2 days ago

I may never fly again and I am serious thank you TSA. I was TSA prechecked but my hands got wanded and supposedly something showed up. My carryons were totally dumped out including my wallet I was taken to a room for full pat down..breast, groin they reached inside my pants...degrading, humiliating and frightening..I am a 63 year old woman with high blood pressure they are lucky I didn't stroke out! As I tried o repack my carryons and tuck in my shirt I heard the agents state that I was the fifth false positive that morning and they knew the wand was defective. Not going back to RSA Fort Meyers!

More Shock: Another Athlete Thug? Heaven Forfend!

So we have word of yet another athlete in the ranks of the habitually criminal college and professional football leagues. Gee, hard to believe. Who wouldathunkit?! 

Americans and Their Hypocrisy Over Football Redux

Amid all the faux outrage over NFL thug Ray Rice, who clocked his then-fiancée-now-wife in an elevator and knocked her out cold, then dragged & kicked her body as if it were a bag of trash, I'm reposting what I wrote back in January, which also links to an op-ed I did in 2003. Not that any of it matters. Fans will always be fans, no matter how many criminals get in the way:

Wednesday, January 15, 2014

Americans and Their Hypocrisy Over Football

DA won’t prosecute fake TSA agent who groped women

Remember the guy who dressed up in a blue shirt, khaki pants, and blue gloves and impersonated a TSA agent in San Francisco last month? He succeeded in leading two victims into a curtained booth and groped at least one of them. Well, we don't know exactly what he did, since he was hidden. We only know that he got away with it, and that if he had been an actual TSA clerk, whatever he did, including sexual molestation, would've been legal. 

Judicial Watch sues TSA/DHS over sexual abuse complaints

This is what it takes to get answers from the TSA and DHS: you have to sue them. And even then you'll be stonewalled. 

United States of Rape

These rapes on college campuses happen so often they've become mind numbing. I used to get outraged almost beyond words, but by now I've become inured. 

It's the same shitty story, over and over, with the same shitty outcome: males, usually athletes or fraternity pigs, gang-rape a drunk girl, taking turns doing it and standing around watching and laughing as the next guy does it. In this day and age, we have the added brutality of picture-taking on cellphones and then the sharing of said pictures to futher humiliate the victim. And then, the school administration sides with the rapists -- usually so the criminals won't miss playing any of their precious football games, which, of course, mean so much in the grand scheme of things. Besides, the rapists are always "nice boys" from "good families."

After all, we all know about the "value" of sports. 

Then most of the school administrators and students -- women included -- blame the victim, ridicule and harass her on campus, if she has the fortitude to stay at the school (I wouldn't), and the cycle repeats, again and again, all over the country. 

"Jane Doe" Raped by CBP and Hospital Personnel Settles Part of Lawsuit

The case of a woman who was raped -- repeatedly -- by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers and by medical personnel at the University Medical Center of El Paso has been partially settled.

I first wrote about the case here. Though this kind of thing goes on all the time at borders (and in prisons and detention centers), this particular case was so egregious that even the mainstream media reported on it. 

TSA supervisor arrested for sexual misconduct, assault on minors

From New York, we have word of yet another TSA agent — in this case a supervisor — being charged with sex crimes. Sex crimes with minors, no less.  

UPDATE to Cecily McMillan Case

A couple of updates to the case of the injustice carried out against Cecily McMillan, which I wrote about earlier today. 

The updates are from the UK paper the Guardian, which has given this story comprehensive coverage throughout, unlike the American mainstream press, which, if it covers it at all, usually buries it -- in the case of the New York Times, in the NY Region section, even though it's a case with national implications. 

(Oh, and I'm still looking for it at NPR, whose website shows nothing about the case. Surprise, surprise.)  

Cecily McMillan, Victim of Police Assault, Found Guilty, In Jail

In the continuing cavalcade of innocent people put in prison in this country -- the vast majority of whom are poor and/or people of color -- we now add Cecily McMillan, an Occupy activist who was assaulted by a New York City cop and who is now in jail for it.

You read that right. She was assaulted by him. Yet she is in jail. And he -- with a history of committing abuse -- is walking free.  

TSA and CBP: comrades in arms -- and crimes

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) are two different agencies operating under the aegis of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Therefore, it shouldn't come as a surprise that they have sensibilities, practices, and impunity in common. The major difference is that the TSA has no law enforcement authority while CBP does. That power makes the latter even more dangerous.

TSA strip-searches another victim

In the on-going sordid history of TSA agents bullying, harassing, robbing, and sexually assaulting people, we have a new story, this time about a cancer survivor.

No criminal charges pursued in Denver TSA assault

Predictably, the Denver District Attorney has decided not to press charges against the TSA agent who assaulted Jamelynn Steenhoek.

We first reported on Steenhoek’s case here. We lauded the fact that the local police seemed to be taking her seriously, though without hope that anything would come of it.