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After his son, Senator Rand Paul, was detained and denied boarding for refusing an invasive pat-down, Representative Ron Paul issued a sharply-worded statement promising to eliminate the TSA should he be elected President
“The police state in this country is growing out of control,” the elder Paul said in a statement released by his presidential campaign.
“One of the ultimate embodiments of this is the TSA that gropes and grabs our children, our seniors, and our loved ones and neighbors with disabilities,” he continued. “The TSA does all of this while doing nothing to keep us safe. That is why my ‘Plan to Restore America,’ in additional to cutting $1 trillion dollars in federal spending in one year, eliminates the TSA.”
We don’t believe the TSA should be eliminated, necessarily, but it needs to be refocused on its mission of security and it needs to do so not by assuming that American citizens are criminals and treating them as such. The White House, meanwhile, tepidly defended the TSA’s actions:
White House press secretary Jay Carney said Monday that he didn’t have any reaction to Paul’s “police state” comments.
But Carney sided with the TSA saying, “I think it is absolutely essential that we take necessary actions to ensure that air travel is safe.”
