-Caveat Lector- >From The Las Vegas RJ http://www.lvrj.com/lvrj_home/1999/Oct-03-Sun-1999/opinion/12001171.html {{<Begin>}} COLUMN: Vin Suprynowicz I watched the Bill of Rights dying last month Last month, I watched the Bill of Rights dying. I don't know if anyone else noticed; it's been on its deathbed so long that most folks don't even go visit anymore. After a pleasant evening speaking to the Karl Hess Club in Marina del Rey, my return flight to Las Vegas had been abruptly canceled by America West the night before. So I found myself approaching the security checkpoint at Terminal 1 of LAX at 6:10 a.m., preparing to catch the 7:56 to Vegas. I pushed my carry-on bag through the X-ray machine, submitting to its scan of my personal effects despite the fact neither the airline nor the airport administration held any warrant to search them, nor even offered me any probable cause. But was that enough? Not last Tuesday. As my bag came down the belt, a tall, sleepy-eyed young man with a shaved head and an ill-fitting blue blazer, standing on the other side of the conveyer belt, asked "Sir, do you mind if I search your bag?" I replied: "Actually, I do mind. I do not consent to any search of my bag." The young man acted as though I had not heard his question. "Sir, do you mind if I search your bag?" "Yes, I do mind. I do not grant my consent for any search of my bag." "Sir," he repeated, "do you mind if I search your bag?" I still don't know how long this would have continued. Sensing that it was up to me to jog the needle on this trance-like broken record, I next asked, "Did you see something on the X-ray that looked like a weapon?" "No sir," he admitted. "It's a random search." "A random search?" "A random search." At this point, a bearded dwarf in a tweed jacket, looking for all the world like former Clinton cabinet secretary Robert Reich, appeared at my left shoulder, coming to the aid of my somnolent oppressor. "He can ask you to search the bag, and if you refuse, he doesn't have to let you continue," said this strange apparition, holding his own two suitcases and a plastic shopping bag. "How is this any of your concern?" I asked the dwarf. "Do you work for the airline?" "No," he smiled proudly, like an enormously self-contented bridge-player laying down the last trump card. "I work for the FAA." "And you're on duty here?" "No, I'm not. But I know about this," he smiled even more broadly. "Then you must know the security directive says they should ask to see our photo ID, but it specifically goes on to say that if we refuse, they can not bar us from boarding" I said quite firmly, drawing the attention of the sleepy-eyed fellow's lady supervisor, who now waddled over to join us. "So I assume it's the same with these 'random bag checks.' That's why they ask for our permission, right? If they don't need our consent, why keep asking for it?" Astonishingly enough, at this point, the dwarf's smile collapsed, and he turned and trundled away like a disturbed woodchuck. "Sir," asked the tall young man, clinging to the security of his minimal training and apparently hoping to break the record of Paul McCartney, who once managed to find more than a dozen different ways to sing the eight words "Why don't we do it in the road?" in the same recording session, "do you mind if I check your bag?" "Listen," I said, "I do not grant my consent, and I'm not going to grant my consent. If you believe you don't need my consent, then do what you have to do." At this point, the young man went through the motions of unzipping and re- zipping the two small side compartments on my bag, barely glancing at, in turn, a clean pair of white socks and a plastic bottle of Pepto-Bismol. He never undid the straps or unzipped the main body of the bag, at all. "Thank you," he said. "I'm not going to thank you," I replied, "because we still have a Fourth Amendment in this country, which protects us from warrantless searches. You do know that, right?" The bald young man looked right through me, focusing on the far wall, his heavy-lidded eyes blinking slowly. His supervisor, who had been puffing up to say something before the FAA troll butted in, looked disgusted but averted her eyes, refusing to meet my gaze. These are the faces of tyranny, bored and uncaring. When instructed to load us political nonconformists onto cattle cars bound for the internment camps, they will do so in unquestioning, shuffling boredom, eyeing the clock to make sure they don't work a minute into their next scheduled break. Thus are our precious constitutional rights daily rendered null and void by uncaring stooges, like dying rest-home patients clutching their bedframes in silent agony, writhing their death throes in their own excrement as the bored orderlies play cards in the break room down the hall, the sound turned up on the cheerful idiot morning TV calisthenics show, hoping their shifts will end before someone comes in and orders them to go change the sheets. Vin Suprynowicz, assistant editorial page editor of the Review-Journal, is author of the book "Send in the Waco Killers." His column appears Sunday. E-mail this item to a friend: {{<End>}} A<>E<>R ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + "Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your common sense." --Buddha + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + A merely fallen enemy may rise again, but the reconciled one is truly vanquished. -Johann Christoph Schiller, German Writer (1759-1805) + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly. -Bertrand Russell + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + "Everyone has the right...to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers." 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