World News(Stuff to Discuss) Free For All

[cmetz]

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if she acted like a lady there wouldn't be any problems, lol

[Predator24]

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AHAHAAHAHAHAHHAHAHA,
She's no tranny

[Striker]

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Well shit, if she's on Hannity Baby Jesus's show then that means .... shit I dunno, but it's big!

haha

[cmetz]

she's cute, i hit it

[Predator24]

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These are the numbers from Tuesday night.



They speak for themselves.

[Striker]

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You'll have to excuse me if I'm not that enthusiastic about the overall intelligence of voters based off cable tv ratings.

[Predator24]

TSA Worker Sets Up Fake Drug Bust as a Joke?

Daniel Rubin: It was no joke at security gate
By Daniel Rubin

Inquirer Columnist

In the tense new world of air travel, we're stripped of shoes, told not to take too much shampoo on board, frowned on if we crack a smile.

The last thing we expect is a joke from a Transportation Security Administration screener - particularly one this stupid.

Rebecca Solomon is 22 and a student at the University of Michigan, and on Jan. 5 she was flying back to school after holiday break. She made sure she arrived at Philadelphia International Airport 90 minutes before takeoff, given the new regulations.

She would be flying into Detroit on Northwest Airlines, the same city and carrier involved in the attempted bombing on Christmas, just 10 days before. She was tense.

What happened to her lasted only 20 seconds, but she says they were the longest 20 seconds of her life.

After pulling her laptop out of her carry-on bag, sliding the items through the scanning machines, and walking through a detector, she went to collect her things.

A TSA worker was staring at her. He motioned her toward him.

Then he pulled a small, clear plastic bag from her carry-on - the sort of baggie that a pair of earrings might come in. Inside the bag was fine, white powder.

She remembers his words: "Where did you get it?"

Two thoughts came to her in a jumble: A terrorist was using her to sneak bomb-detonating materials on the plane. Or a drug dealer had made her an unwitting mule, planting coke or some other trouble in her bag while she wasn't looking.

She'd left her carry-on by her feet as she handed her license and boarding pass to a security agent at the beginning of the line.

Answer truthfully, the TSA worker informed her, and everything will be OK.

Solomon, 5-foot-3 and traveling alone, looked up at the man in the black shirt and fought back tears.

Put yourself in her place and count out 20 seconds. Her heart pounded. She started to sweat. She panicked at having to explain something she couldn't.

Now picture her expression as the TSA employee started to smile.

Just kidding, he said. He waved the baggie. It was his.

And so she collected her things, stunned, and the tears began to fall.

Another passenger, a woman traveling to Colorado, consoled her as others who had witnessed the confrontation went about their business. Solomon and the woman walked to their gates, where each called for security and reported what had happened.

A joke? You're not serious. Was he hitting on her? Was he flexing his muscle? Who at a time of heightened security and rattled nerves would play so cavalierly with a passenger's emotions?

When someone is trying to blow planes out of the sky, what is a TSA employee doing with his eyes off the ball?

When she complained to airport security, Solomon said, she was told the TSA worker had been training the staff to detect contraband. She was shocked that no one took him off the floor, she said.

"It was such a violation," the Wynnewood native told me by phone. "I'd come early. I'd done everything right. And they were kidding about it."

I ran her story past Ann Davis, regional TSA spokeswoman, who said she knew nothing to contradict the young traveler's account.

Davis said privacy law prevents her from identifying the TSA employee. The law prevents her from disclosing what sort of discipline he might have received.

"The TSA views this employee's behavior to be highly inappropriate and unprofessional," she wrote. "We can assure travelers this employee has been disciplined by TSA management at Philadelphia International Airport, and he has expressed remorse for his actions."

Maybe he's been punished enough. That Solomon's father, Jeffrey, is a Center City litigator might mean this story isn't over.

In the meantime, I think the TSA worker should spend time following passengers through the scanners, handing them their shoes. Maybe he could tie them, too.

Update: Ann Davis, the TSA spokeswoman, said this afternoon that the worker is no longer employed by the agency as of today. She said privacy laws prevented her from saying if he was fired or left on his own.

[Five Inch Taint]

The plane, a 50-seat regional aircraft that was less than a third full when it took off from La Guardia Airport, had been climbing through the early-morning sky for about 25 minutes. A 17-year-old passenger in a whitish sweater took out something he had carried onboard, and strapped it onto his wrist and his head.

Two Jewish men in Brooklyn wearing tefillin, small leather boxes attached to leather straps, during a prayer for victims of the Mumbai attacks in 2008.
To some people in New York, that is a relatively common sight: an observant Jew beginning the ritual of morning prayer. But to at least one person on US Airways Express Flight 3079 on Thursday ? the flight attendant ? it looked ominous, as if the young man were wrapping himself in cables or wires.

And in a time when in-flight thinking is colored by the brutal knowledge that passengers have hidden bombs in underwear or shoes, she told the officers in the cockpit.

The pilot decided to divert the Kentucky-bound plane to Philadelphia. In less than 30 minutes it was on the ground, police officers were swarming through the passenger cabin, and the Transportation Security Administration was using terms like ?disruptive passenger? and ?suspicious passenger? to describe the boy.

An hour or so after that, Lt. Frank Vanore, a spokesman for the Philadelphia police, had another explanation.

?It was unfamiliarity that caused this,? he said.

He said the flight crew had never seen tefillin, small leather boxes attached to leather straps that observant Jews wear during morning prayers. The flight crew ?didn?t understand what it was,? he said, and the pilot ?erred on the side of caution and decided to radio that in and to divert the flight.?

The boy?s grandmother, Frances Winchell, said it was just one of those things. ?It?s true that we in America are very, very skittish,? she said at the airport in Louisville, where she had been waiting to meet the boy and his 13-year-old sister, who was also on Flight 3079. Mrs. Winchell said she hoped people would learn about the rituals and not be fearful.

The young man and his sister, whose names were not released, are from White Plains, the authorities said. Rabbi Shmuel Greenberg of Young Israel of White Plains said that they were members of his congregation and that the young man was ?a good boy, bright, intelligent, as docile as you can imagine.?

?He didn?t think of the ramifications, I guess,? Rabbi Greenberg said. ?You can?t expect the whole world to know what this ritual is all about.?

He said men in his congregation recited morning prayers ?if at all possible within four hours after sunrise.?

?Nobody would have assumed it would create panic,? he said, ?but in today?s environment, I guess everything creates panic.?

In fact, Lieutenant Vanore said the other passengers did not know exactly why the plane went to Philadelphia until it was on the ground and police officers and federal agents began checking for explosives. They found none. The young man was ?was completely cooperative? and explained the prayer ritual, Lieutenant Vanore said.

He explained that the scare began when the young man was ?in the process of praying.? The flight attendant noticed the tefillin and asked what he was doing.

The young man?s response was straightforward, Lieutenant Vanore said: ?He gave the explanation he was in prayer.?

But the flight attendant was concerned about the tefillin. She called the cockpit and ?described it as best as she?d seen it,? Lieutenant Vanore said, ?and there was an item wrapped around his head, straps or wires.? ?The straps did appear to be cables or wires to her,? he said. ?To the naked eye looking at it, it looked like that. She said it had wires running from it and going up to his fingers. When they notified the pilot of that, he had to follow his protocol. It?s hard to Monday-morning-quarterback it.?

The young man and his sister went on to Louisville from Philadelphia. He said nothing as he walked through the terminal in Louisville in mid-afternoon.

Reached at her home on Thursday night, Ms. Winchell would not put her grandson or granddaughter on the telephone, but she allowed a reporter to ask questions on a speakerphone while they were present. Ms. Winchell said that police officers who boarded the plane pointed their guns ?at the passengers as a whole? and at her grandson ?a little bit.? She said her grandson and granddaughter were then handcuffed for a few minutes.

?The handcuffs were only for a short period of time,? she said.

A spokesman for the Philadelphia police could not be reached for comment after the interview with Ms. Winchell.

Some observant Jews said they were not surprised that the ritual had attracted attention ? or that people on the plane would have been unfamiliar with it. ?When they see a passenger strapping yourself,? said Isaac Abraham, a Satmar who lives in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and campaigned for the Democratic nomination for a City Council seat last year, ?you might as well strap yourself with hand grenades. They have no idea.?

?He probably just figured, ?I have nothing else to do on the plane, I might as well use this time to pray,? ? he added. ?Other people read. They watch a movie. He figured, ?Let me grab the time.? But the obvious reality of it is that when we see people carrying explosive material in their shoes and their pants and I am the passenger next to him and see someone strapping, I would panic too.?

Rabbi Greenberg, the boy?s rabbi, had some advice for future flights.

?I would suggest, pray on the plane and put the tefillin on later on,? he said. ?Pray, and fulfill the ritual later.?

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[Mr Handlebars]

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They better not be messing with my peeps.

[jchutch2]

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Yeah...because observant Jews are performing all kinds of terrorist acts.