-Caveat Lector-
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [smashthestate] Great Article
This is a great article.
Sunday, October 03, 1999
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
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
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