* * * * *
                                        
                         “Coffee, tea or strip search?”
                                        
> After some more grumbling on my part they eventually finished with me and I
> went to retrieve our luggage from the x-ray machine. Upon returning I found
> my wife sitting in a chair, crying. Mary rarely cries, and certainly not in
> public. When I asked her what was the matter, she tried to quell her tears
> and sobbed, “I'm sorry … it's … they touched my breasts … and …” That's all
> I heard. I marched up to the woman who'd been examining her and shouted,
> “What did you do to her?” Later I found out that in addition to touching
> her swollen breasts—to protect the American citizenry—the employee had
> asked that she lift up her shirt. Not behind a screen, not off to the side—
> no, right there, directly in front of the hundred or so passengers standing
> in line. And for you women whove been pregnant and worn maternity pants,
> you know how ridiculous those things look. “I felt like a clown,” my wife
> told me later. “On display for all these people, with the cotton panel on
> my pants and my stomach sticking out. When I sat down I just lost my
> composure and began to cry. Thats when you walked up.” 
> 

Via jwz's livejournal [1], Coffee, Tea, or Should We Feel Your Pregnant Wifes
Breasts Before Throwing You in a Cell at the Airport and Then Lying About Why
We Put You There? [2] 

My Dad keeps asking when I'm flying out to visit him again. And I keep
telling him I'm no longer going to fly anywhere until crap like that stops. I
got stripped search [3] the last time I went to the airport and I wasn't even
flying! 

Several years ago for Thanksgiving I flew a round trip from Ft. Lauderdale to
Chicago to Boston and I got searched in Chicago, never mind the fact that my
plane was taking off in about twenty minutes. 

Lord knows what will happen to me if I try flying now. 

[1] http://www.livejournal.com/talkread.bml?journal=jwz&itemid=119054#cutid1
[2] http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig3/monahan1.html
[3] gopher://gopher.conman.org/0Phlog:2002/09/19.2

Email Sean Conner at sean@conman.org

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