Babies Being Stopped In Airports?
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Bad Decisions, The War On TerrorismThis is extremely silly.
WASHINGTON – Infants have been stopped from boarding planes at airports throughout the U.S. because their names are the same as or similar to those of possible terrorists on the government’s “no-fly list.”It sounds like a joke, but it’s not funny to parents who miss flights while scrambling to have babies’ passports and other documents faxed.
Ingrid Sanden’s 1-year-old daughter was stopped in Phoenix before boarding a flight home to Washington at Thanksgiving.
“I completely understand the war on terrorism, and I completely understand people wanting to be safe when they fly,” Sanden said. “But focusing the target a little bit is probably a better use of resources.”
You’d think the airport employees could simply use common sense and let these kids through.
This is red tape at its very worst. Ugh…
This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 16th, 2005 and is filed under Bad Decisions, The War On Terrorism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
August 16th, 2005 at 11:02 am
I said it before, and I’ll say it again. Airport security BS is going to be a swing issue next election. More and more people are aware of this kind of nonsense, and it’s making their veins pop. (I saw that phrase in the “Related Posts” at the bottom. It’s apt for this post as well.) The vast majority of people are okay with security checks, but it has gotten to be way out of control. This will be the pivot around which other security issues will swing….
August 16th, 2005 at 12:18 pm
Security as a whole may be a swing issue, but not airports per se. And even so, security in general will play a minor role to the usual suspects: jobs, civil rights, and national defense – of which security is one facet – so yeah, security’s just one part of a bigger issue, but the airport thing is minor head-assery in comparison. Most Americans don’t fly.
August 16th, 2005 at 4:11 pm
Paul, over the coarse of four or five years a pretty large percentage of people in the country do fly, although probably not a majority. I wouldn’t be surprised, though, if almost 50% of actual voters do fly.
The reason I think airport security hassles will become an issue is because it is so trivial, in some sense. But it will be easy to run against an incumbent Congress by saying, “You’ve had five years since 9/11/2001 to secure the nation, and what have you done? Illegal aliens are STILL coming across the border by the hundreds of thousands, the ports aren’t protected, bin Laden is still free, we’re in a mess in Iraq, and all you’ve accomplished is to TAKE AWAY MY NAIL CLIPPERS AT THE AIRPORT?!”
Nail clippers, taking shoes off, banning babies, etc. It will be an easy to relate to stupidity to highlight a general lack of accomplishment. Remember GHWBush not recognizing the supermarket scanner? It highlighted other concerns about his being “out of touch”.
August 16th, 2005 at 4:26 pm
Regarding George H.W. Bush and the supermarket scanner:
http://www.snopes.com/history/american/bushscan.htm
Snopes isn’t known for having a conservative bias, either. Some people claim Snopes tilts left, but I haven’t been convinced of that.