Sometimes our liberty slips away silently, and it is almost hard to notice what went wrong and where. The one fortunate thing about the TSA is that they certainly don’t fit that definition.
The American people shouldn’t be subjected to harassment, groping, and other public humiliation simply to board an airplane. As you may have heard, I have some personal experience with this, and I’ve vowed to lead the charge to fight back.
Please read the email below from my friend Matt Hawes at Campaign for Liberty. Campaign for Liberty is leading the fight to pressure Congress to act now and restore our liberty. It’s time to END the TSA and get the government’s hands back to only stealing our wallets instead of groping toddlers and grandmothers.
I hope you will join Campaign for Liberty in this fight.
In Liberty,
Senator Rand Paul
The government literally has its hands in our pants.
Everyone knows they've done it for years - reaching in and grabbing our wallets while forcing huge tax bills and piles of debt on us.
But now they've gone too far.
Every inch of our person has become fair game for government thugs posing as "security" as we travel around the country.
The TSA simply must be stopped.
It is out of control, and it gets worse every day.
And it's not even useful in protecting our nation from terrorism.
The TSA tells us that being harassed at the airport "makes us safer," but, time and again, only quick-thinking actions by passengers have stopped dangerous situations on airplanes - from people the TSA let right through security.
One Israeli security expert, who certainly knows a thing or two about how to guard against constant threats, referred to the full-body scanners as "useless."
And just recently, an activist exposed a critical flaw in the TSA's body scanners when he repeatedly got through them just by putting a metal object in a pocket he had sewn on the side of his shirt. Because the scanner uses a dark background, the item blended right in.
These are the kind of results you get when you leave security up to bureaucrats.
Senator Rand Paul has a plan to do away with the TSA for good, but he needs our help.
Will you fill out your petition urging your representative to support - and your senators to co-sponsor - Senator Paul's END THE TSA bill?
Senator Paul got a lot of attention recently for his own encounter with the TSA, where he was detained, harassed, and missed his flight before ultimately being "allowed" to continue his journey. If that is what happens to a U.S. senator at an airport, imagine what is happening to people across the country.
Actually, you don't have to imagine.
More and more Americans are coming forward to tell their stories of the abusive TSA.
The TSA has declared war. I think everyone from Janet Napolitano to Alex Jones would agree with that. What we don't agree on is on whom they have declared war.
Toddlers in wheelchairs. Mothers with babies. 94-year-old grandmothers. Well-known United States senators.
Do any of those sound like potential terrorist threats?
They do if you are the TSA.
Just recently, we heard about how a young mother was stopped and forced through some very extra-thorough screening. Her crime?
She was attempting to board the plane with a breast pump to provide milk during the trip for her infant. The distraught mom was forced to pump the milk in a public restroom to satisfy the TSA's demands.
In 2010, a three-year-old boy in a wheelchair was subjected to intensive screening and a thorough pat-down.
The parents were forced to stand by helplessly - not even allowed to touch their child to reassure him everything would be ok.
But everything is not ok.
The TSA is part of a growing problem in our government - where it now has the power to do whatever it wants without any regard to our rights:
*** The so-called "Patriot" Act allows for warrantless searches and wiretaps,
government snooping through your bank records, and the issuing of blatantly unconstitutional National Security Letters (NSLs);
*** The recently passed
National Defense Authorization Act codifies into law the idea that the government could indefinitely detain a U.S. citizen
without trial;
*** The National Counterterrorism Center is now authorized to store your personal information - even with no
suspicion of terrorist activity - for up to 5 years.
Our rights aren't simply eroding.They are being taken out to sea in the wake of a tsunami from our government.
Now, the TSA is working on assaulting Americans outside of the airport, too.
With its "VIPR" program, the TSA is expanding to train stations, bus terminals, and even checking vehicles on public roads.
Soon, we won't be safe from their grabbing hands anywhere.
And as the TSA keeps harassing more customers out of the airports, an already hurting airline industry will continue to struggle - ultimately costing jobs, further driving up the costs of travel, and creating calls from politicians for yet another government bailout to "save" an industry their TSA is helping to destroy.
So will you join Senator Rand Paul and Campaign for Liberty in fighting back?
For over 10 years, the TSA has increasingly become the most visible and harassing arm of the new police state. There are countless more examples of abuse from the TSA:
***
A TSA agent patting down a young girl at New
Orleans' Louis Armstrong
International Airport in 2011. The video shows a cooperative family,
and when the girl's mother asks, "Can't you just
re-scan her?" the agent replies, "No" and proceeds to grope the poor
child;
*** A cancer survivor in Charlotte was forced to
remove a prosthetic breast;
*** A young mother of a two-week-old infant in Florida was harassed to open the bottles of baby
formula she was traveling with on her flight, which would have spoiled the only food available to the infant;
*** Detroit TSA officers ignored a man's
warning about a colostomy bag, breaking it and forcing him to board a plane covered in urine.
The only limit to the stories of abuse that I could tell you in
this letter is space. There is no shortage of stories. There are
more every day.It is time you and I stood up and said "ENOUGH."
Senator Rand Paul has a plan to get the government out of your pants and the TSA out of your life.
His END THE TSA bill will fully privatize the TSA, getting the government out of the airport entirely.
And Campaign for Liberty has a plan to force action on this bill in the coming months, but to make this happen, we must have your support today.
First, please complete your END THE TSA petition.
Campaign for Liberty will deliver it, along with hundreds of thousands of others from outraged Americans.
If we can raise the necessary funds, Campaign for Liberty will also run a full, targeted media campaign to convince representatives and senators to either get on board or be held responsible for this continuing outrage.
But carrying out these plans requires you to chip in a contribution of $10 - or whatever you can afford - today.
Campaign for Liberty has certainly had our hands full this year with multiple battles on a variety of fronts. So we simply cannot take on this battle without your support.
Whatever you can chip in would go a long way toward fighting back against the out-of-control TSA.
So please, fill out your petition and chip in a contribution to Campaign for Liberty today.
As always, thank you for all you do for the cause of Liberty.
In Liberty,
Matt Hawes
Vice President
P.S. The TSA grows more and more out of control every day. Far from protecting us from terrorists, they are instead setting their sights on small children, mothers with infants, the elderly, and the disabled.
You and I must stop these abuses once and for all and take back our rights.
Please complete your petition in support of Senator Paul's END THE TSA bill, and chip in contribution of $10 to C4L right away.
