There are few things in my ‘decades’ long life we’ll say that still surprise me. Isn’t that sad? Of course certain crimes are still shocking, but right now I’m talking about my ever growing and unacceptable insensitivity to governmental mismanagement and unaccountability. It used to be that I’d hear of a crooked politician and be at least a little shocked. Now we hear about stuff like this quite often.

But when it comes to the TSA, they seem to be held to a higher level of accountability. This is because they directly effect us - You, me and every other American who goes to the airport. Every time we travel we have to endure this governmental beast of a bureaucracy - For me, it’s every time I go to work.

So when I heard about this TSA story I was not only shocked, I was quite appalled and then plain irate.

In it, MyFoxColorado.Com is reporting on a screener who brought a gun through a security check point, was caught, and then did not face any charges as a result OR even loose his job. To talk about this double-standard on the scale required would take hours or even days, but that’s not my point and I don’t think you’d stay long enough anyway.

Rather, I’d prefer to take this discussion to a higher level. The was an excellent article on April 25, 2008 in The Wall Street Journal by Peggy Noonan entitled, “The View from Gate 14″. It’s a highly suggestible read. Noonan describes how as a country we have become desensitized to unacceptable pat downs, pokes, prods, and other violations of our rights at TSA checkpoints - while at the same time we seem to be harboring an ever growing anger towards our elected officials for this “guilty until proven innocent” attitude they have taken against us while at the airport.

As an American Citizen, I watch first hand as my right to be proven guilty turns into a ‘right’ to be proven innocent every time I go to work or otherwise fly on the airlines. In this case, here is a TSA agent who was proven guilty, and then made innocent through the same perverted sense of airport justice that assumes everyone is guilty no matter what… Except TSA agents, apparently.

It’s ridiculous. It’s insane… but it begs a few basic questions:

• What’s the real reason he got off?
• What would have been the real outcome for one of us “non TSA folks?”
• Why the double standard???

It’s questions like these that the American People are going to have to get answered, or else we’re all just going to be continual victims of our own ignorance.

‘Nuff said.
Capt’n Chris

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