WASHINGTON, D.C. – Sen. Rand Paul spoke today at a full committee hearing of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee regarding invasive TSA searches. Below is video and transcript of that hearing.
TRANSCRIPT:
SENATOR RAND PAUL: Currently the invasive pat-down searches are random and not based on risk assessment?
JOHN S. PISTOLE, Administrator of the Transportation Security Administration at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security: No, actually they are based on intelligence that we know specifically from Christmas Day, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the way he concealed that device. There are some random pat-downs if that’s what you’re referring to, but it is based on intelligence.
PAUL: I guess this little girl would be part of the random pat-downs, this little girl from Bowling Green Kentucky, one of my constituents. They’re still quite unhappy with you guys as well myself and a lot of other Americans who think you’ve gone overboard, you’re missing the boat on terrorism because you’re doing these invasive searches on six-year old girls. Same week that this happened I got a call from another neighbor of mine in Bowling Green, a little boy had a broken foot and crutches. They didn’t want to go through all the screenings, so they took the crutches off and the cast and he wanted to hobble through on his broken foot. His dad was helping him. TSA said “back away, back away.” Then he had to go through the special search because he previously had a cast on, even though the cast went through the belt. When the dad comes close they say “back away, back away.” “If you don’t back away you won’t fly.”
This kind of gets back to this whole idea of what are willing to do, what are we willing to give up as a country. In your interview with ABC News, you said “I see flying as a privilege.” There are those of us who see otherwise. The Supreme Court concluded in Saenz vs. Roe in 1999 says that although the word travel is not found in the text in the constitution, yet the constitutional right to travel from one state to another is firmly embedded in our jurisprudence. Justice Stewart went on to say in Shapiro vs. Thompson that the right to travel is so important that it is assertable against private interference as well as governmental action. A virtually unconditional constitutional right guaranteed by the Constitution to us all. This isn’t to say we don’t believe in safety procedures. But I think I feel less safe when you’re doing these invasive exams on a six-year old.
It makes me think you’re clueless, if you think she’s going to attack our country and you’re not doing your research on the people who want to attack our country. It absolutely must involve a risk assessment of those who are traveling. And the fact that she’s being patted down and I don’t feel comfortable really with your response that we are no longer doing random pat-downs. I think you ought to get rid of the random pat-downs. The American public is unhappy with them, they’re unhappy with the invasiveness of them. The Internet is full of jokes about the invasiveness of the pat-down searches and we ought to just consider, is this what we’re willing to do. The other thing is while we’re doing that there are examples of where we’ve had let-downs. When Faisal Shahzad got on the plane, the alleged TimesSquare bomber, he was on a watch list. Everybody said, “it was the airline that let us down.” Well he had to go through TSA screening. There were 10 hours, we ought to be able to react. Is the TSA looking at flight manifests? Doing background research of people getting on and off the planes? Are we targeting or looking at those who might attack us?
I really get the idea that because our approach is so politically correct and has to be so universal that 6 year olds and 9 year olds and people in wheelchairs. You know you probably saw in the news, just the other day the young man that is mentally handicapped, who had a plastic hammer because you are telling people “to fit this in a box, to do this, tell your agents to do this.” They took away something the boy had had for 29 years, and if you have ever dealt with a child with autism there are certain things that comfort them and keep them calm. And to do that, it just really just shows that no one is thinking. They are giving this rote automaton “crack down, pat people down, and do this.” And if we are not thinking about catching terrorists, I mean should be about police work. I mean most of these people have, you know, police work would catch them. The hi-jackers who came here were over-staying their welcome and were on student-visas but were not going to school. We need to be doing better police work and doing less of the universal giving up of our freedom to live our life the way we would like to live our life. I would like you to comment a little bit about the right to travel as a privilege and a little bit about the idea about universality of insult that we are being given versus targeting this toward people that might attack us.
Right, and I just wanted to follow up on that, I mean 10 years is a long time. We’ve been a decade now, we don’t have a frequent flyer program, we don’t have a trusted traveler program. I know I don’t want this to be against the TSA, I know most of the agents and I think they are good people. But at the same time, you know they are wasting their time, all these Congressman and Senators go back and forth, but to be so fair we have to search all of them. We know them by name a lot of times, and we are getting the pat down searches everybody else is “to be fair.” But so are the frequent travelers, my brother-in-law is on 2 to 3 planes a week, he’s an air force grad. He is unlikely really, he is not a terrorist okay. And so we are wasting time on these people, and I really think as far at the privacy issue, let a private company, encourage a private company, that we’re beginning this, let’s turn it over, let’s have a frequent flyer program that you can voluntarily participate in. But let’s get it done. Thank you.
The latest press release from Senator Rand Paul's office, "Democrats Want to Make Getting a Job Easier - for 200 Bureaucrats":
WASHINGTON, D.C. - Today, Sen. Rand Paul issued the following statement regarding today's vote on the motion to proceed with the nominations bill, S. 679.
"Despite a loud and clear message from voters last November for reform in Washington, the U.S. Senate has been more or less a body of inaction. Our country is faced with record deficits, the very real threat of a catastrophic debt crisis, yet the fact we reached our current debt limit was ignored. Our President is unconstitutionally waging war in Libya. The Senate has gone almost 800 days without passing a budget. The unemployment rate is at 9.1 percent, and the only solution Democrats are offering is more government jobs. This bill paves the way for 200 presidential appointees to bypass the transparency and accountability our government owes its citizens. If their idea is creating jobs of political favor for Washington bureaucrats by bypassing the Senate confirmation process, instead of addressing the pressing issues facing our country, the degradation of Washington is much worse than any of us imagined.
"Holding czars and bureaucrats accountable to the citizens they serve is the government's duty. To eschew this process in the name of 'efficiency' is a lie to the taxpayers who fund their paychecks. That is why I, along with Sen. David Vitter, am introducing an amendment to put an end to Obama's unelected, unaccountable czars."
The House Financial Services Domestic Monetary Policy and Technology Subcommittee is holding an important hearing today at 2pm entitled "Investigating the Gold: H.R. 1495, the Gold Reserve Transparency Act of 2011 and the Oversight of United States Gold Holdings."
The Financial Services press release stated:
H.R. 1495, the "Gold Reserve Transparency Act of 2011," calls for an audit by the Treasury that gives a full and thorough accounting of the U.S. government's gold reserves, requiring an inventory and assay of the gold reserves. The Treasury's audit is subject to independent review by the Government Accountability Office, allowing them access to any pertinent records or locations, including Fort Knox.
The hearing will discuss recent audits of U.S. gold reserves; challenges to conducting a full audit; and impediments to an accurate assessment of the US gold position, including any leases, swaps or other encumbrances placed upon the gold reserves; and also examine changes to the legislative proposal that will ensure a full and accurate audit, assay, and inventory of U.S. gold reserves.
Knowing how much gold the US Government is holding and what it's worth is of critical importance to our nation's monetary policy. Some prominent political figures have suggested the US must return to a gold standard within the next decade, and conducting a thorough audit and inventory of the gold is a sound first step.
An op-ed published today by The New York Times critiques the foreign policy identity crisis in the GOP and characterizes both sides of the evolving debate in the persons of two newly elected U.S. Senators who rode the Tea Party wave; Rand Paul (KY) and Marco Rubio (FL):
Where Rubio talks sweepingly about America’s mission in the world, Paul expresses skepticism about nation-building and democracy promotion. Where Rubio invokes World War II and the cold war, Paul invokes the founding fathers’ fears about executive power and overseas entanglements. Where Rubio borrows Ronald Reagan’s expansive rhetoric, Paul praises Reagan’s caution in committing American troops to foreign wars.
The Hill reports that Speaker John Boehner has announced two votes on Libya this week, one to authorize the military intervention, and another that would cut off funding, effectively bring on an end to the US role in bombing Libya.
The vote could come as early as Thursday in the House.
Contact your representative and urge them to oppose the administration's unauthorized military adverturism in Libya.
Syria is much in the news lately, with Senator Lindsey Graham and others calling for military action to bring about the removal of President Bashar al-Assad and to protect "the Syrian people from slaughter." Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has also been condemning Syria nearly every day. It is a refrain that is becoming all too familiar as it echoes the arguments made to support the current ill-fated efforts against Libya's Moammar Gaddafi. The call to arms is somewhat astonishing as it is clear that the United States does not need and cannot afford another war in the Middle East or anywhere else.
And the contradictory stories that are being floated by the two sides in the Syrian situation also illustrate very clearly the danger of interventionism. The Syrian government is saying that the protests are concentrated in border regions where there is a lot of smuggling and arms trafficking and also where the militant Muslim Brotherhood is strong. They are claiming that the killing of 120 policemen two weeks ago was the work of heavily armed militants in the city of Jisr al-Shughour, that the killing caused the city's population to flee, many winding up across the border in Turkey.
Spokesmen for the protesters, most of whom are located in the United States and Western Europe, are telling a somewhat different story, that the people in the city fled to escape an army crackdown and that the deaths of the policemen took place when frustrated demonstrators started to fight back.
The two accounts illustrate perfectly well that it is impossible to know what exactly is going on in Syria and support the case for non-intervention by outside parties, including the US. The Syrian government might be confronting heavily armed militants or maybe not. The protesters might want democracy or they might want rule by fundamentalists. Who can say and why does the United States feel compelled to play a role? It is ultimately up to the Syrians to determine their form of government and any attempt by Washington to control or influence that process will undoubtedly have bad results.
CNBC's John Carney has an article explaining how default in Greece could impact your wallet:
Forty-four percent of mutual fund assets in the U.S. are invested in the short-term debt of European banks, according to a report from Fitch.
A separate report from Moody's noted that 55 percent of those holdings are in the commercial paper of French banks, such as Societe Generale, BNP Paribas[BNP-FR51.11-0.19(-0.37%)] and Credit Agricole. French banks are some of biggest creditors to Greece, with over $53 billion in outstanding loans to the Greek government and private sector.
Moral hazard is when the state gives an industry an explicit or implicit promise of security that it cannot keep. The state stopped insuring money-market accounts in 2009, but many holders of money-market accounts didn't pay attention, and "Many believe that in a crisis the gov't would once again step in to insure the accounts, just as it did in 2008" Is a massive tragedy coming, especially for old people?
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