Filling in for Glenn on Friday on The Glenn Beck Program, Sheriff David Clarke shared some observations on the current drama with the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), how we got to this point and the hypocrisies of "Big Brother."
"How did we get to this TSA thing? And as you recall, this is the result of a 9/11 commission that was formed by Congress to come up with recommendations to prevent another 9/11-type event," Clarke said. "So they created this new bureaucracy called the Department of Homeland Security. It is now, I believe, the biggest agency in Washington, D.C. ...Bureaucracies are like trains. They move on tracks. And they only move forward or backward."
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This time backward means the formation of the TSA. On the heels of 9/11, there was no way President Bush could have vetoed the TSA politically, but even he was against it --- and now the chickens are coming home to roost.
"So initially, remember, you couldn't take water [on airplanes]. You couldn't take nail files...all this nonsense. Eighty-year-old woman who likes to knit can't take knitting needles on the airplane. But that wasn't enough," Clarke said.
This is where the hypocrisy comes roaring onto the scene.
"Take your shoes off. After the guy who tried...a shoe bomb. Then we had the underwear bomber, but they don't make us take our underwear off," Clarke said. "Well, a guy tried to board a plane with a bomb in his underwear, why don't you make us take our underwear off? 'Well, that would be a little too far.' Yeah, so is taking shoes off. So now you have to strip at the airport, to board an airliner."
Things have gone far enough for Sheriff Clarke.
"Folks, this is intrusive, and it's humiliating," Clarke said. "Take your shoes off. We're going to look at you naked. We're going to pat you down, kids down, senior citizens down --- and they never stop."
Not only is it humiliating, it's ineffective and some countries are abandoning the practice.
"Israel has never done that. Ben Gurion Airport," Clarke said. "I asked, how come you guys don't make people take your shoes off? He goes, 'Well, it's because it's just not effective.' And he was a little sheepish. He didn't want to say, because it's stupid. But that's what I say: It's stupid."
Listen to this segment beginning at mark 1:26:40 from The Glenn Beck Program:
Featured Image: People wait in a security line operated by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) at John F. Kennedy (JFK) Airport on May 24, 2016 in New York, New York. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)