I have previously written about how the Transportation Security Agency (TSA) set out to create a crime never approved by Congress: the crime of making a joke in an airport about security issues. The TSA has long appeared to chafe at the notion of an agency dependent on Congress or the public for its authority. That appears the message being sent to John E. Brennan. You may recall Brennan from a story last year when he stripped in the Portland International Airport in protest of increasing invasive TSA security measures. He was cleared by a judge who found his stripping was a form of protest. However, the TSA was clearly miffed by decision of the judge, so Brennan was pulled into the administrative abyss by TSA with an agency charge. It appears that, if the law will not punish a citizen, TSA will.
Agency fines and charges place citizens into a system that is heavily weighted in favor of the agency and denies basic due process protections found in courts. After the judge threw out the charge against Brennan, 50, the TSA got one of its administrative judges to fine him $1,000 for violating a federal rule stating passengers may not “interfere with, assault, threaten, or intimidate” TSA screeners. You may ask how stripping is an act of interference or assault or threat or intimidation. It does not matter. Once in the administrative process, the agency gets a huge degree of deference in determining violations with judges who are dependent on the agency for the very jurisdiction of their “court.”
What is equally troubling is the news blackout imposed by TSA over the case. Administrative judge George Jordan was asked to make an exception and allow cameras into the courtroom but he denied the request. The message seemed to be that Brennan’s move was in the hands of TSA and neither a court nor public opinion would save him now. TSA has refused to even answer questions on the case.
We can debate the ruling of the court in finding no criminal conduct, but the subsequent effort to fashion a new crime from the TSA regulations should be a matter of concern for all citizens. The TSA is taking an act found by a court to be an act of protest and re-defining it as an act of intimidation or threat to the TSA. The case should also focus attention at the ever-expanding system of administrative courts that are pulling citizens into a bureaucratic vortex where they face unfair procedures and treatment.
By the way, after the incident, Brennan was fired from his job as a web development manager at Seagate Technology.
Source: Oregon
From where does the “administrative court” derive its authority over the general public? Isn’t it only applicable to those within its administrative sphere, namely the TSA themselves? How is it possible that illegally instituted courts which do not adhere to the rules of evidence or Constitutional limitations may enforce any ruling on Americans?
It is good they acquitted him. Now they need to be right with him. Indecency laws need to be done away with.
We have gotten out of the *Cuba* crisis of hijackings so why doesn’t the TSA do the same too?
9/11 was just a weird *WTF?* kind of event which reeks fowl play.
If you want decent discussions about 9/11 without name calling go to a forum I discovered called Let’s Roll and you will be amazed at the evidence that keeps coming forth as people start to speak up.
The MSN has been controlled since the 70s to support communism.
Does anybody know why a year before 9/11 outside observation decks were mysteriously closed all over the nation with only a notice on the doors citing *Security reasons* very vaguely?
Also the other reason we don’t need TSA is air travel has been MUCH safer since the *Hijack to Cuba* era.
Even without any form of airport security whatsoever airplanes would not have any incidents the staff cannot control if they had proper authority and be allowed pepper spray.
It’s amazing that NO airliner in the world has been hijacked since the early 90s *Cuba* crisis.
(I don’t count 9/11 as I have seen a lot of coming proof of fowl play involved and if you so much as even question 9/11 you get name called.
What’s funny is long before 9/11 airports were a rights free zone. It’s just now we have finally woken up as a nation.
One thing interesting I found out searching old posts on an airliner forum back in the 90s a lot of innocent people were being harassed for photographing in the gate areas even though it was legal.
Bags would go thru unscreened yet the moment you took out that camera of you’res the rent a cops would be on you’re case.
Gays are not sodomites. Police are sodomites as being one. Military teaches people to be sodomites too.
IANAL, but I thought, constitutionally, the courts were charged with findings of guilt and punishment. On what legal basis does an executive branch agency get to decide this?
All that is required is that he raise a 1st Amendment issue in the administrative proceeding and appeal any adverse determination to the federal District Court. While the Court must give deference to an administrative determination, this particular determination will have been made without respect to Constitutional protections, and so is void.