TSA "Sexual Assault" Passenger Pat Downs Irk Airlines; Violate Rights

Florida Airport Considers Ditching TSA


An Orlando, Florida, airport official wants to join the small group of U.S. airports who use a private company to screen passengers instead of the Transportation Security Administration.

Larry Dale, president of the Sanford Airport Authority in Orlando, says the airport first considered the change in February and it was approved on Oct. 5.

"Airports are unique...one size doesn't fit all," Dale told CNN's American Morning on Friday. Dale says his board and staff have been looking at other airports that provide their own security in preparation for making the switch at Orlando Sanford International Airport. Dale says his research shows that using a private security screening company would be "more efficient and more enjoyable to the public."

Dale's comments come during a week in which the TSA has been under fire for it's airport screening procedures, including imaging technology and pat downs. TSA is in charge of protecting the nation's transportation systems.

Private airport security is not uncommon. The TSA lists 16 airports that are currently participating in its Screening Partnership Program. They include San Francisco International Airport, Kansas City International Airport, Greater Rochester International Airport and Key West International Airport. Participating airports work with TSA to hire an approved security contractor and must follow TSA security guidelines when screening passengers and baggage, according to the TSA website.

"All commercial airports are regulated by TSA whether the actual screening is performed by the TSA officers or private companies. The TSA sets the security standards that must be followed and includes the use of enhanced pat downs and imaging technology, if installed at the airport," said TSA spokesman Greg Soule.

Congressman John Mica, R-Florida, the ranking member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, wrote a letter to the nation's 100 busiest airports urging them to ditch the TSA for private security.




Controversy Over Pat-Downs, Body Scans Lands At DIA


Despite ongoing criticism from some Washington lawmakers and many travelers, Transportation Security Administration chief John Pistole refused Wednesday to back off the agency's position that tougher airport screening techniques are needed to counter evolving threats.

"I'm not going to change those policies," he declared to lawmakers.

At U.S. airports, the TSA has been deploying more advanced imaging scanners that perform a kind of electronic strip-search on passengers and allow screeners hidden in control rooms to search the images for concealed weapons and explosives.

And in recent weeks, TSA screeners also have escalated the pat-down procedure on passengers in a way that some say is far too intrusive.

"I'm frankly bothered by the level of these pat-downs," Sen. George LeMieux, R-Fla., told Pistole, who was testifying before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation.

"I wouldn't want my wife to be touched in the way that these folks are being touched," LeMieux said. "I wouldn't want to be touched that way."

Pistole, who has been subjected to a pat-down himself, said: "It is clearly more invasive." But the procedures are necessary, he said, to detect devices not seen before.

As passengers traveled through Denver International Airport on Wednesday in advance of the Thanksgiving rush, some invoked their constitutional right against unreasonable search, while others were more forgiving of efforts to keep travel safe.

Jeffrey "Gator" Henry of Charlotte, N.C., moved through security in skimpy gym shorts and a sleeveless tank top as part of his plan to reject screening by advanced imaging machines — the devices that use either millimeter-wave or backscatter X-ray technology — and to request a pat-down instead.

"It's an invasion of privacy," said Henry, a television and film producer, as he waited at DIA's A concourse checkpoint.

Henry said he's joined the nascent movement that is asking travelers to voluntarily opt out of screening by the full-body scanners in favor of more time-consuming pat-downs. Some have designated the day before Thanksgiving as National Opt-Out Day.

"I dressed this way so there is nothing to pat down," he said of the more intensive TSA hand searches.

TSA pat-downs have evolved into more of a light massage, with screeners running their hands up and down the arms, torsos and legs of those passengers selected for the extra screening procedure.

Anthony Giovingo of New Orleans was flying home after visiting his daughter in the Denver area and said he is unfazed about full-body scanning.

"It doesn't bother me," Giovingo said. "I'd rather go through the scanner than be patted down. It's quicker and less invasive. I have nothing to hide, so what's the problem?"

Smooth flying for some

On Wednesday, it appeared that most travelers, including Henry, were able to avoid screening by the advanced imaging devices or pat-downs by passing through the checkpoint metal detectors without generating alarms.

Jill Johnson of Colorado Springs arrived at DIA from Dallas and said at that city's airport, she similarly had cleared the metal detector and avoided the more controversial screening techniques.

Johnson said she has not yet been screened at an airport by a full-body scanner but would not object if she were asked to submit to such an electronic scan.

"Everybody has to understand that we're talking about preventing another 9/11," she said. "It might be an invasion of privacy, but we're talking about a matter of life and death."

Of the enhanced pat-downs, Johnson added, "If it's done respectfully, people should allow it."

TSA's new pat-down procedure is "more up close and personal" than earlier hand-search techniques, but it is "not just Keystone Kops making it up as they go along," said Richard Bloom, director of terrorism, intelligence and security studies at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, Ariz.

New TSA techniques develop out of a collaboration between the security and intelligence personnel that is constantly evaluating ever-changing threats, said Bloom, who spent 20 years in U.S. intelligence work.

The TSA operates 768 security checkpoints, with 2,225 screening lanes, at 458 airports across the country. Currently, the agency has deployed 385 of the advanced imaging scanners at 68 U.S. airports, including six at the three checkpoints at DIA. Those six use millimeter-wave technology.

In remarks to the Senate committee, Pistole said the TSA's goal is to have 1,000 advanced imaging machines deployed at airports by the end of 2011.

A topic for the Courts

Currently, there is no legal "bright line" to determine whether advanced imaging scans or intensive pat-downs amount to unreasonable searches of passengers, said Sam Kamin, an associate professor of constitutional law and criminal procedure at the University of Denver law school.

As lawsuits develop, courts undoubtedly will be looking at the privacy question, but they likely will be "loathe to second-guess" the TSA's balancing of security and privacy, Kamin said.

TSA officials undoubtedly would rather be on Capitol Hill answering questions about screening intrusiveness than "explaining why an airliner was brought down," he said.


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Sources: CNN, Denver Post, Fox News, The Guardian, Youtube, Google Maps

Americans Are Divided Over Arizona's New Immigration Law (Polls)

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U.S. Split Over Ariz. Immigration Law


Michael Clausen owns the Quality Inn in Nogales, Ariz.

For now.

Clausen says the hotel, which caters to people streaming across the Mexican border just seven blocks away, is in danger of closing, thanks to the state’s new illegal immigration law and the official and unofficial boycotts it has inspired.

The Sunday night after Gov. Jan Brewer signed the law on April 23, “we had three rooms occupied out of 97 in the hotel,” Clausen said. At the border, there was virtually no line to get into the country, he said. Usually, the wait is 1½ to two hours.

“It just fell through the floor,” he said. “People stopped crossing the border.”

The nearby Tubac Golf Resort & Spa, built 50 years ago by Bing Crosby, saw more than $300,000 of business vanish in just a week as customers canceled reservations.

“They feel badly they have to pull out,” said Linda Cormier, the resort’s general manager. “But they are feeling strongly about the boycott.”

The Arizona law has sharply divided political figures across the country.

On Wednesday, Los Angeles became the largest city yet to boycott Arizona in a move that will likely affect some $8 million in contracts to the state.

Elected leaders in dozens of other cities — from San Francisco to St. Paul, Minn., and Boston to Boulder, Colo. — have called for boycotts of the state.

At the same time, polls show significant support for laws like it, and lawmakers have introduced similar measures, or have announced plans to do so, in at least 12 other states.

Boycotts could have real effects

The backlash began as soon as Brewer signed the measure, which requires law enforcement officers to check someone’s immigration status if they have reason to suspect that he or she is in the country illegally. It is scheduled to take effect in July.

The city councils of Tucson and Flagstaff voted to challenge the law in court, and the mayor of Phoenix, the state’s largest city, joined protests against it.

Earlier this month, Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz., called for a national boycott of his own state. Such boycotts are not just symbolic: They typically trigger reviews of contracts with Arizona businesses and ban municipal employees from traveling to the state on official business.

Industry and activist groups also weighed in, promising to cancel lucrative conventions and other public events. Alpha Phi Alpha, the nation’s largest black fraternity, switched its national convention in July from Phoenix to Las Vegas, at an estimated cost of $300,000 in penalties, while the American Immigration Lawyers Association voted to move its fall conference to another state.

Other groups announcing boycotts included the Service Employees International Union, representing 2.2. million workers; the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, representing 1.3 million workers; and the National Council of La Raza, the nation’s largest Latino activist organization.

The baseball players union pointedly noted that half of Major League Baseball’s teams conduct spring training in Arizona and called for the law to be repealed (Commissioner Bud Selig is also under pressure to yank the 2011 All-Star Game out of Phoenix).

And the Republican National Committee came under intense pressure not to choose Phoenix for its 2012 national convention before party leaders selected Tampa, Fla., on Wednesday.

Mexico turns the tables

In what could be the ultimate insult, the Mexican government issued a travel warning to Mexicans “visiting, living or studying in the state of Arizona,” mimicking numerous such advisories the U.S. State Department has issued about traveling to Mexico.

The Mexican government — saying the law “violates inalienable human rights protected by international legal provisions and the U.S. Constitution” — sent officials to meet with U.S. groups challenging the law to coordinate “protection and consular assistance” and to provide legal representation for Mexicans in the state, the Foreign Affairs Ministry confirmed.

It said Mexico would defend the rights of any Mexican nationals in Arizona, “regardless of their immigration status.”

Juan Carlos Escamilla, mayor of San Luis, Ariz., near the Mexican border, said such reactions had paralyzed business and government projects in the state.

San Luis had been set to take part in a business exposition next month in conjunction with the Arizona Mexico Commission, which fosters cooperation between Arizona and its neighbor to the south. But after Brewer signed the immigration law, Mexican officials dropped out, and the events were canceled.

“We feel that relationship we built so many years with our counterparts and our sister cities in Mexico, we’ve lost that, and it’s hurt,” Escamilla said.

Large majorities back law like Arizona’s
Protests against Arizona’s law have been held in various U.S. cities, some of them drawing thousands of people. But the law has also drawn considerable support across the country.

Nearly two-thirds of Americans — 64 percent — approved of the law in an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released Wednesday. The measure commanded a strong majority even though roughly the same percentage of respondents said they expected it to lead to discrimination against legal Latino immigrants.

Two other recent surveys, one by CBS News and The Wall Street Journal and the other by the Pew Research Center for the People and Press, mirrored those findings.

Idaho state Sen. Mike Jorgenson, a Republican, said people intuitively understood that illegal immigration diverted taxes and jobs that would otherwise go to U.S. citizens and legal immigrants. That’s why he said he would introduce a measure in his state to crack down on the hiring of illegal immigrants by private businesses.

“Illegal immigration is costing Idaho about $200 million a year in the form of education, crime, actually imprisonment,” Jorgenson argued, citing research by the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which seeks to reduce immigration levels. “... What’s it costing our indigent care through counties?”

In Utah, Republican state Reps. Steve Sandstrom and Carl Wimmer said they would introduce a measure similar to the Arizona law, which drew support from 65 percent of state residents in a survey released last week by NBC station KSL-TV and the Deseret News of Salt Lake City.

“The states need to take steps, because illegal immigration has a legitimate impact on individual citizens and the economy,” Wimmer said. “Utah needs to be at the forefront of this discussion.”

Similar measures are in the works in Iowa, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas and Michigan, where Republican state Rep. Kim Meltzer said, “We have borders in place for a reason.”

Many hurdles before law takes effect

Back in Arizona, the immigration restrictions are scheduled to take effect in July, but first they must overcome numerous legal challenges. One of them could come from the federal government.

“We are considering all of our options. One of the things we are thinking about is the possibility of filing a lawsuit,” Attorney General Eric Holder said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Beyond the widely cited civil rights concerns, Holder said the law could also be challenged on the grounds of “federal pre-emption,” saying it wasn’t clear that states had the authority to enforce immigration laws.

Janet Napolitano, who as secretary of homeland security oversees U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, also said she had “deep concerns with the law from the law enforcement perspective.”

“We think it will siphon and detract from resources that we need to focus on those in the country illegally who are committing the most serious crimes,” Napolitano said.

For Napolitano, the issue is an awkward one. To become President Barack Obama’s homeland security secretary, she resigned as governor of Arizona.

During her tenure, she had vetoed several similar immigration measures.

Her successor was Jan Brewer.


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Sources: MSNBC, Google Maps

TSA Allowed Faisal Shahzad To Board Plane, Like Umar Mutallab

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How Was Faisal Shahzad Able To Board Plane?


The Times Square bomb suspect was on the federal no-fly list and under surveillance but still managed to get aboard a jetliner bound for the United Arab Emirates, sources said Tuesday.

Faisal Shahzad had been under constant watch at his Bridgeport, Conn., home since 3 p.m. Monday and federal authorities had planned to arrest him there that evening, two people familiar with the investigation told The Associated Press. Authorities believe he decided to flee after being spooked by news reports that investigators were seeking a Pakistani suspect in Connecticut, one of the people said.

Shahzad somehow lost the investigators who were trailing him, the two people said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the incident. It was unclear when Shahzad eluded investigators.

The night's events, gradually coming to light, also underscored the flaws in the nation's aviation security system, which despite its technologies, lists and information sharing, often comes down to someone making a right call.

A law enforcement official told NBC News that the Transportation Security Administration had alerted airlines, but the information hadn't yet gotten into airline systems. A senior U.S. official told NBC that if the system had worked properly, "He should have never been able to get on that airplane."

As federal agents closed in, Shahzad was aboard Emirates Flight 202. He reserved a ticket on the way to John F. Kennedy International Airport, paid cash on arrival and walked through security without being stopped.

By the time Customs and Border Protection officials spotted Shahzad's name on the passenger list and recognized him as the bombing suspect they were looking for, he was in his seat and the plane was preparing to leave the gate.

It didn't. At the last minute, the pilot was notified, the jetliner's door was opened and Shahzad was taken into custody.

After authorities pulled Shahzad off the plane, he admitted he was behind the crude Times Square car bomb, officials said. He also claimed to have been trained at a terror camp in Pakistan's lawless tribal region of Waziristan, according to court documents. That raised increased concern that the bombing was an international terror plot.

Not ‘in danger of losing him’

The Obama administration played down the fact that Shahzad had made it aboard the plane. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano would not talk about it, other than to say Customs officials prevented the plane from taking off. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said the security system has fallback procedures in place for times like this, and they worked.

And Attorney General Eric Holder said he "was never in any fear that we were in danger of losing him."

It may be that the airline either never saw or ignored key information that would have kept Shahzad off the plane, a fact that dampened what was otherwise hailed as a fast, successful law enforcement operation.

The senior U.S. official who spoke to NBC News said Shahzad's name was put onto the no-fly list about 11 a.m. Monday morning, some 12 hours before he was taken into custody.

A law enforcement official told NBC that the TSA sent notifications to airlines but the "information had not yet been populated in the airline's system to the point of triggering an automated alert."

Missed chances

The official said Shahzad's name should have set off alarms throughout the ticketing and boarding process. The system should have been triggered when he purchased the ticket.

If he purchased the ticket before his name was placed on the list, then the airline and authorities should have been alerted when he got his boarding pass, either from an agent or one of the self-service kiosks.

That's especially true on an international flight because his passport would have been electronically scanned before he was issued a boarding pass. Even at the boarding gate, there are systems that alert TSA and customs officials to someone on the no-fly list attempting to board a flight.

When Emirates sold the ticket, it was working off an outdated list. Airline officials would have had to check a Web forum where updates are sent if it were to have flagged him. Because they did not, law enforcement officials were not aware of his travel plans until they received the passenger list 30 minutes before takeoff, the official said.

Jet didn't leave the gate

There was also some confusion over whether the plane left the gate and was recalled.

The law enforcement officer told NBC News that Shahzad boarded the plane and the door was closed, but the plane didn't leave the gate. The door was reopened and Shahzad was removed from the plane.

The plane was then cleared to leave the gate and did so. Moments later, officials thought better of it and decided they needed to rescreen passengers and cargo and brought the plane back, the law enforcement official told NBC.

Emirates did not return repeated calls for comments. Earlier in the day, the company issued a general statement saying it was cooperating with investigators and takes every precaution to ensure its passengers' safety.

The reliance on airlines to check government lists has been a known problem for years. The government has long planned to take over the responsibility for matching passengers to watch lists, but the transition has taken longer than expected. The new program is still in the test phase for domestic airlines and is still months away from beginning with international carriers.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs blamed the airline but emphasized a more positive bottom line: U.S. authorities did get Shahzad on the no-fly list and he never took off.

"There's a series of built-in redundancies, this being one of them," Gibbs said. "If there's a mistake by a carrier, it can be double-checked."


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Sources: MSNBC, Google Maps

Gulf Oil Spill Obama's Katrina? Did He Wait Too Long?

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Gulf Oil Spill: What Went Wrong?


Suddenly, everything changed.

For days, as an oil spill spread in the Gulf of Mexico, BP assured the Government the plume was manageable, not catastrophic. Federal authorities were content to let the company handle the mess while keeping an eye on the operation.

But then Government Scientists realized the leak was five times larger than they had been led to believe, and days of lulling statistics and reassuring words gave way Thursday to an all-hands-on-deck emergency response.

Now questions are sure to be raised about a self-policing system that trusted a commercial operator to take care of its own mishap even as it grew into a menace imperiling Gulf Coast nature and livelihoods from Florida to Texas.

The pivot point had come Wednesday night, at a news conference at an oil research center in the tiny community of Robert, La. That's when the nation learned the earlier estimates were way off, and an additional leak had been found.

On Thursday, President Barack Obama set in motion a larger federal mobilization, pledging to deploy "every single available resource" to the area and ordering his disaster and environmental leaders to get down there in person. Only a few days after the Coast Guard assured the country there was "ample time" to protect the coast if oil came ashore, warnings from the government were newly alarming.

"I am frightened for the country, for the environment," David Kennedy, assistant chief of the National Ocean Service at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told The Associated Press. "This is a very, very big thing, and the efforts that are going to be required to do anything about it, especially if it continues on, are just mind-boggling."

The next Katrina?

The political subtext of the crisis was clear and increasingly on people's minds, whether from a federal office deploying oil-containment booms or from a Louisiana parish awaiting yet another sucker punch from the sea.

Will this be Obama's Katrina? Should the federal and state governments have done more, and earlier? Did they learn the lessons of the devastating hurricane?

Political calculations vied with the increasingly scary Gulf reality — hundreds of thousands of oil and its progression to landfall as soon as Thursday night.

Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, who also is in a hot campaign for the Senate, flew over the slick and commended the federal actions to date but wondered if anyone, really, could be doing enough in this situation. "It appeared to me," he said, "that this is probably much bigger than we can fathom."

The crisis began with a massive explosion aboard the drilling rig Deepwater Horizon on April 20, more than 40 miles off the Louisiana coast. The search for 11 missing workers overshadowed environmental concerns until they were given up for lost.

Rear Adm. Mary Landry, chief of the Coast Guard in the region, said at the outset that most of the oil was burning off, leaving only a moderate rainbow sheen on the water and no sign of a major spill.

"Both the industry and the Coast Guard have technical experts actively at work," she said. "So there's a whole technical team on both sides of the aisle here to ensure we keep the conditions stable."

Two days later, the Deepwater Horizon sank and crews spotted a 1-by-5-mile sheen with a dark center that appeared to be a crude oil mix. Obama got his first briefing on the accident.

Landry said the following day that no oil appeared to be leaking from a well head at the ocean floor, nor was any leaking noted at the surface.

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Issues of Offshore Drilling

At the White House, Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs said that sometimes accidents happen, and the loss of the Deepwater Horizon was no reason to back off on the president's recent decision to support expanded offshore drilling.

On Thursday, that policy was challenged by some Democratic lawmakers, now that the fuller extent of the spill was known, and Gibbs acknowledged that details might be revisited.

Throughout last week and into this one, the government was deferring to BP on what was being done at the site and on assessments of progress.

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The Coast Guard was not doing its own independent, firsthand assessment of the seabed rupture. Landry repeatedly asserted that BP was the responsible party and would shoulder the costs and organizational duties associated with the cleanup effort while the Coast Guard monitored things and approved the numbers of vessels working the scene and the methods of control.

On Monday, Landry offered assurances that the Gulf Coast should be safe. "This is ample time to protect sensitive areas and prepare for cleanup should the oil impact this area," she said. And at sea, BP officials were "doing their best."

On Wednesday night, she reported the findings of federal experts that up to 5,000 barrels a day were leaking from the well. BP had estimated only 1,000. As well, the company told the Coast Guard a new leak had been found. Obama was briefed on these developments on Air Force One while returning at night from the Midwest.

The equation had changed, like a hurricane setting a new course.



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Sources: Fox News, MSNBC, Whitehouse.gov, Youtube, Google Maps

Janet Napolitano On List To Replace Justice Stevens??

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ABC News Potential Supreme Court Nominees: White House Prepared For Stevens Retirement


Lawyers for President Obama had prepared a short list of potential replacements for Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens long before he officially announced his retirement today.

Stevens signaled in the fall that he was considering retirement, which gave White House lawyers plenty of time to rework the list of potential nominees that had been created when Justice David Souter announced his retirement in May 2009 and vet new possibilities.

The crucial calculation that Obama will have to make is what kind of political capital he wants to spend on potentially contentious nomination hearings. Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee have signaled that a candidate with a paper trail on divisive social issues could create a firestorm.

The president will review nominees, read their legal writings and perhaps meet with some of them. A decision will be made "in the coming weeks," a senior White House official told ABC News.

Democrats are hoping to schedule the hearings by mid-July in order to vote before senators leave for the August recess to prepare, in some cases, for the mid-term elections.

Top Candidates to Replace Stevens on Supreme Court:

According to White House sources, Obama has a list of fewer than 10 possible nominees to review. Among them: Solicitor General Elena Kagan, Judge Diane Wood and Judge Merrick Garland.

Top candidates went through extensive vetting last year before Obama settled on Justice Sonia Sotomayor. The short list then included Wood, Kagan, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm.

A name that has gotten a lot of attention since the Souter retirement is Garland.

Janet Napolitano

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, 52, enjoys a close relationship with the president and would be an "outside the judicial box" candidate, but may be roundly criticized for her comments after the arrest of Umar Farouk Abdulmuttalab, who attempted to bring down a Northwest Airlines flight with explosives. Napolitano initially told ABC News, "Once the incident occurred, the system worked." A day later, she had a slightly different message on NBC News: "Our system did not work in this instance," she said. Obama later ordered an extensive review.

Elena Kagan

Elena Kagan, 49, serves as the president's solicitor general. She is known as one of the finest scholars in the country, dazzling both liberal and conservative friends with her intellectual prowess and her ability to find consensus among ideological opposites.

Judge Diane Wood

Judge Diane Wood, 59, of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit, was nominated by President Bill Clinton in 1995. She has a wide array of job experiences away from the bench, including positions in the U.S. government at the departments of State and Justice, and as a teacher at the University of Chicago. While at the university, she played a key role in developing policies on sexual harassment and maternity leave. Unlike Kagan, Wood has had to wrestle with hot-button issues such as abortion. Potential confirmation hearings would be lively and controversial.

Merrick Garland

Judge Merrick Garland, 58, a graduate of Harvard Law School and former law clerk for Supreme Court Justice William Brennan Jr. He sits on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.



Sources: ABC News, Hardball, MSNBC

Another TSA Screw Up: Forces Disabled Boy To Remove Braces

Another Terrorist Stopped By Vigilant TSA Officer: 4-Year-Old Boy In Leg Braces


Now we know how the "Crotch Bomber" got through security – TSA Screeners are busy terrorizing disabled toddlers.

4-year-old Ryan Thomas is developmentally disabled as a result of being 16 weeks premature and has to wear corrective braces. His ankles are malformed and his legs have little or no muscle tone. He only just learned how to walk, briefly, on his own, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.

But that didn’t seem to matter to the Transportation Security Administration Screeners at Philadelphia International airport.

It was Ryan's first trip to Disney in March 2009, according the paper's columnist Daniel Rubin. All was going well for the Thomases -- they had gotten to the airport with hours to spare before their flight, but as it turns out, they would need that extra time.

Ryan's father was breaking down his son's stroller to put it on the conveyor belt as his wife, Leona, walked Ryan through the metal detector. As expected the alarm went off and Leona tried to explain the situation, the paper said.

The screener replied that the boy would have to take the braces off and walk through the detector again. When Leona Thomas attempted to walk with Ryan she was told he would have to do it alone.

She tried, calmly, to explain that Ryan could barely walk with the braces, let alone without them, but the compassionless screener was deaf to her pleas, according to the newspaper.

Meanwhile Bob Thomas was getting increasingly agitated. He is an officer in Camden's emergency crime suppression team, so he understood the need for security, but this was overkill, he told the Philadelphia Inquirer.

The Thomases eventually complied and Ryan made it through on his own, but Bob immediately asked for a supervisor. The supervisor was less than sympathetic and stood by the screener's actions. A fellow police officer even told Bob Thomas to drop it and go enjoy his vacation.

But Bob Thomas didn’t forget and after his trip he called the airport manager. Eventually, with help from Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Daniel Rubin, the TSA finally responded to the incident saying that the boy never should have had to remove his braces and they would be looking into what went wrong that day in March.

For the Thomases that probably feels like too little too late.

Sources: Philadelphia Inquirer, TSA, CBS News

Democrat Leaders Rally To Save Janet Napolitano's Job

Democrats Plot To Protect Janet Napolitano


Democrats worried about protecting the homeland in wake of the Christmas Day terror plot are also working to protect one of their own: Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.

With at least seven congressional committees investigating the failures behind the terror plot, Democrats are carefully gaming out the testimony of Napolitano to spare her from the worst of the GOP criticism.

First, they may shield her from the Senate Judiciary Committee, keeping conservative senators like Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), John Cornyn (R-Texas), Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) and others from bashing her in a major public forum. She may instead appear before the Senate Commerce Committee, where some expect her to receive gentler treatment.

Next, the White House is working on Sen. Joe Lieberman, the mercurial chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, to avoid an ugly clash in his hearings. Lieberman will grill the secretary but won’t call for Napolitano to resign, and he could reiterate his support for her remaining at the DHS post, Senate aides say.

“To some extent it’s going to be a free-for-all; we are as angry as anybody about this,” said an aide to a senior Senate Democrat. “But apart from saying the wrong thing early on, the breaches aren’t really the fault of Napolitano and DHS, so she’s not going to be the target.”

In the House, the chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee had seemed to punt on hearings, opting instead for a Government Accountability Office inquiry, until saying Friday in a letter to committee members that he did “plan to hold oversight hearings.”

And while Democrats are figuring out how to look tough while protecting a top official in the hot seat, the House Homeland Security Committee is getting frustrated.

Should the secretary appear — Napolitano is scheduled to return from a trip abroad a day before the scheduled Jan. 27 hearing — she will face questions from both Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) and the fiery top Republican, Rep. Peter King of New York.

Thompson said he “won’t give her an unequivocal endorsement because there have been missteps,” but he isn’t calling for her resignation.

Thompson says he is frustrated with the Obama White House and Napolitano for what he considers subpar communication with the House committee. Since the incident two weeks ago, Thompson said he has not spoken with National Security Adviser Jim Jones or top presidential adviser John Brennan. Thompson, however, has spoken to Napolitano at least twice since the incident, he said.

On Friday afternoon, Thompson was preparing a letter to President Barack Obama outlining concerns he has with how the White House handled the Christmas Day plot.

“There is real concern on the committee that the communication between Napolitano and the House Homeland Security Committee is not where it should be,” Thompson told POLITICO Friday morning. “The secretary is not as communicative with members of Congress as she needs to be.”

Thompson’s comments show the fine line Democrats are walking on the terrorism investigation. They want to look tough and demand responsibility from the White House, but they don’t want to do any serious political damage.

“I don’t think you’re going to see Democrats march in lock step with the [Obama] administration on this,” said a senior Senate Democratic aide. “We’re not going to walk the plank for the White House in these hearings.”

No matter what happens in these hearings, however, Republicans are ready to pounce, and they want Napolitano to personally answer their questions. A handful of Republicans have called on the secretary to resign.

“Janet Napolitano, start with that,” King said when asked what he wants in the late-January hearings.

Napolitano was heavily criticized for claiming “the system worked” in the immediate aftermath of the failed bomb attack, but she later backtracked from that comment. Democratic aides believe Napolitano “has gotten through the worst of it” and is not in danger of being forced out or resigning, but they also realize that she may get battered a bit in these oversight hearings.

And even though Obama has used the “buck stops with me” line regarding the terrorism plot, his public statements have constantly reminded people that agencies blew it. Obama has also publicly acknowledged the “failure” by the Homeland Security Department and U.S. intelligence agencies in pre-empting the botched attack, and he said he was personally responsible to the American people for their security.

The president’s steps were intended to reduce some of the angst among Capitol Hill Democrats, yet there is still apprehension about how far Republicans will go in seeking to capitalize on the incident.

By the end of January, the terror investigation will have involved at least seven congressional panels, including the House and Senate Intelligence committees, the House and Senate Homeland Security committees, the Senate Commerce Committee and the House Armed Services Committee. Many of these committees will also brief members privately on classified matters.

Republicans also say they won’t be satisfied just to hear from Napolitano. King is also looking to press Democrats into calling CIA Director Leon Panetta and Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair to testify.

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is perhaps the embodiment of the political problem that Democrats face in dealing with the botched terror attack.

Chairman Edolphus Towns (D-N.Y.) had seemed to opt out of holding his own hearing on Flight 253 — as Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), ranking member on the panel, had demanded — and instead ordered the GAO to investigate the incident.

Republicans responded to Towns’s blocking tactic by issuing a detailed spreadsheet of every time the committee investigated terrorism when the GOP held power in Congress. Republicans have accused Towns of being “derelict” in his duties.

Towns sees pure politics in the GOP push to hold hearings.

"Their primary demand seems to be that the committee hold 'immediate hearings' that require testimony from 'every government agency,'" Towns said in a letter sent to committee members on Friday. "I do not understand the purpose of holding hearings prior to conducting any investigation, except to provide a platform for uninformed grandstanding that occupies the time of officials who are busy keeping our nation safe."

Towns said Friday that he was “reviewing this matter and plan to hold oversight hearings.”


Sources: Politico

Does Janet Napolitano Deserve Another Chance?

Don't Under Estimate Janet Napolitano



Most Americans got their first prolonged look at Janet Napolitano, the secretary of homeland security, on Sunday, Dec. 27. After a passenger on a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam ignited a concealed fuse as the plane approached Detroit for a landing, apparently intending to blow it up and kill all aboard, it fell to Napolitano to take charge of the federal response.

"No drama" demeanor

It came as no surprise to anyone who knows her that Napolitano handled the incident and its aftermath with aplomb. In the years I have known her, she has managed every challenge that has come her way with the same calm command that she showed in this instance. If there is anyone in the administration who embodies President Obama's preference for quiet competence with ``no drama,'' it's Napolitano.

I watched as she made the rounds of the morning interview programs that Sunday, laying out what she knew about the would-be terrorist and carefully refusing to speculate about the many matters that were still being investigated. She is being criticized for saying ``the system worked,'' but her part of the response system did work.

It must have been a frantic time for her. She was in San Francisco, far from her Washington office, and she must have had a sleepless night. But her eyes were bright and her voice was calm. Everything appeared to be completely normal, except that her usual sense of humor was absent, as it should have been, given the circumstances.

I flashed back to the first time I met her. A good friend from the staff of the late Rep. Morris K. ``Mo'' Udall had gone to work for Napolitano. On a reporting trip to Arizona, I called the staffer and she suggested meeting Napolitano for lunch in Phoenix.

Napolitano was involved in a primary race for governor, and she picked a neighborhood Mexican restaurant where the warmth of the greeting she received made it clear she had been there many times. We talked about her campaign and, more generally, about Western state politics.

It was evident from that first conversation that Napolitano had a firm view of herself and the course she had staked out. Her primary opponent was running to her left, but Napolitano understood that her credentials as a law-and-order former U.S. attorney for Arizona, appointed by President Clinton, were more important to her chances of winning the governorship of Barry Goldwater's and John McCain's home state than any checklist of liberal positions.

Her instinct was to run down the center, and she was confident enough of her positions so that she did not agonize over them. What struck me most forcibly at that first meeting was her lack of guardedness. We quickly found ourselves talking as if we had known each other for years, and her comments were as candid as they were shrewd.

She soon became one of my favorite pols in either party. I saw her mainly at the semi-annual meetings of the National Governors Association, where she won a warm welcome on both sides, and occasionally on reporting trips to Arizona.

In 2008, ensconced in her second term as governor, her endorsement was sought by all the Democrats running for president. Bill and Hillary Clinton had powerful supporters in Arizona, especially in the Latino community. But I knew from our conversations that Napolitano had substantial doubts whether the senator from New York, with her conventionally liberal positions, could defeat McCain -- whose independence Napolitano always respected.

Deepening trust

Napolitano had been much slower than Obama was in coming to doubt the war in Iraq, but it really was no surprise when she gave an early endorsement to the young senator from Illinois. His trust in her was deepened when she took on the assignment of drafting the platform for passage at the Democratic National Convention -- a potentially tricky chore that she pulled off without a bobble.

The Obama Cabinet is filled with talents, but many of the stars are of an age or temperament unlikely to turn them into successor candidates. Napolitano will face many substantive tests -- not just in dealing with terrorism but in playing an important role in immigration reform -- before she is a candidate for anything. But her potential is almost unlimited.


Sources: Miami Herald, Politico, Youtube

Anderson Cooper, CNN Panel Evaluates Obama's New Security Measures

Sources: CNN, Wikipedia

Obama's Security Review Speech Highlights System Failures; White House Report

Link To White House National Security Review Report Documents

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Obama Points To Failures In Intelligence System


President Obama said Thursday that America's first line of defense is "timely, accurate" intelligence that is properly integrated.

"That's not what happened" before the attempted December 25 airplane bombing, he said.

Obama pointed out three failures in the nation's intelligence system that allowed a would-be bomber to board a U.S.-bound plane:

The intelligence community didn't aggressively follow up on information that it had that al Qaeda sought to strike the U.S.; there was a failure to "connect the dots" in the information; and shortcomings in the in the terror watch list system that didn't place him a no-fly list.

There was "a failure to connect and understand the intelligence that we already had," Obama said.

The President said he had ordered four reforms:

First), he ordered the intelligence community to assign responsiblity to individuals to pursue leads on specific high-priority threats.

Second), intelligence reports will be distributed more widely and quickly.

Third), Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair will overhaul existing intelligence analytical efforts.

Fourth), the government will strengthen the criteria used to add people to no-fly list.

Obama also said he was directing the Homeland Security Department to improve international partnerships to boost screening at airports around the world. The Department of Energy will work to develop better screening technology, he said.

Obama said he was establishing accountability reviews for agencies. His national security adviser, John Brennan, will report to him every 30 days on the reviews, he said.

There is "no silver bullet" to securing all flights coming into America every day, Obama warned.

He spoke of his "solemn responsibility" to keep the nation secure. "Ultimately, the buck stops with me."

But Obama is not planning to fire anyone for the foul-up, a senior administration official said.

The official said the president believes that previous administrations would "play hide the ball" and not come clean with the American people when things go wrong, so he wants to be direct about what needs to be fixed, but the official said the president does not want this process to devolve into finger-pointing.

Pressed on whether people in the administration are likely to be fired to follow through on Obama's promise last week to bring "accountability" to all levels of government, the senior administration official said no.

"It's about holding accountable a system so that it works," said the senior official.

Another U.S. official briefed on the investigation said federal agents flagged the name of the suspect in the botched Christmas Day terrorist attack while his plane was headed from the Netherlands to the United States and were planning to question him at the Detroit airport.

The source said agents with Customs and Border Protection officials "analyzed the database" as is their practice when the plane was in the air and were ready "to meet" and interview Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab when his plane arrived.

Also, an Obama administration official said Customs and Border Protection followed its normal procedures as it prepared for arriving passengers, and by doing so, it accessed the suspect's record in the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment database.

The White House is pushing back on an Los Angeles Times report published Wednesday saying U.S. border security officials became aware of the suspect's alleged extremist ties while he was en route.

"As we have indicated before, there were bits and pieces of information about AbdulMutallab available in a variety of areas in the system prior to December 25. There was no new information that emerged when the plane was in the air," an administration official said.

Today the White House plans to release an unclassified report by John Brennan, the assistant to the president on homeland security and Counter Terrorism, detailing what went wrong and also to reveal new steps intended to thwart future attacks.

Since the attempted attack, the intelligence community has scrubbed the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment database, which has more than 500,000 suspects, adding people to U.S. watch lists and no-fly lists as a result.

Officials would not have pulled AbdulMutallab aside for a secondary screening or prevented him from flying in Amsterdam because he was not on the no-fly or terror watch lists, the administration source said.

Obama has demanded to know why the suspect was allowed on the plane, given the information available.

"This was a screw-up that could have been disastrous," Obama told his national security team Tuesday, according to a senior administration official. "We dodged a bullet, but just barely."

According to authorities, AbdulMutallab tried to detonate explosives hidden in his underwear as a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam made its final approach to Detroit. The device failed to fully detonate, instead setting off a fire at the man's seat.

Obama said he wants immediate reforms to correct what he called systemic failures that allowed the attack to happen.

Americans will feel "a certain shock" after reading Thursday's report on the missed warning signs, White House National Security Adviser James Jones told USA Today.

"We know what happened, we know what didn't happen, and we know how to fix it," Jones said. "That should be an encouraging aspect. We don't have to reinvent anything to make sure it doesn't happen again."

John Negroponte, former director of national intelligence, said it's always easier to piece things together in retrospect.

"There's always a lot of noise in the system, and then you've got to sort out from that noise the signals that are really important. And sometimes, we fail to do that," he said on CNN's "American Morning."

"My suspicion in this case is that there wasn't necessarily that much information and that there was quite a bit of ambiguity in whatever was available. In retrospect, it probably looks like we should have been able to figure out what happened," he said.

Negroponte said that what interests him is whether the attempted attack is a part of a larger plot.

"I think the important thing right now is that we get as much information from his as we can," he said.

AbdulMutallab is scheduled to make his first court appearance Friday.

On Wednesday, a Federal Grand Jury indicted him on charges of:

Attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction; attempted murder within the special aircraft jurisdiction of the United States;

Willful attempt to destroy and wreck an aircraft within the special aircraft jurisdiction of the United States;

Willfully placing a destructive device in, upon and in proximity to an aircraft within the special aircraft jurisdiction of the United States;

and Two counts of possession of a firearm/destructive in furtherance of a crime of violence.

Mostly Republican critics have said AbdulMutallab should have been subjected to military interrogation rather than receiving the rights of a defendant in the U.S. criminal justice system.



Sources: CNN, MSNBC