Lunatics Are In Charge

You better watch what you say in an airport.  You better not criticize the TSA.  You better not joke about anything or you will face invasive searches, be thrown off your plane, placed in temporary custody or maybe even arrested and charged with a crime.  The lunatics are now in charge and you should beware.

Yesterday, we told you about Arijit Guha, the Arizona State University
Ph.D. student who says his shirt mocking the Transportation Security
Administration led to him and his wife getting kicked off his flight
returning to Phoenix over the weekend.

While waiting at the gate, Guha says, one of the airline’s supervisors
told him his shirt made employees and passengers “uncomfortable.” [Phoenix New Times]

Of course free speech is not any big deal anymore.  You can’t even joke about anything at the airport because the people in charge are humorless lunatics.

On a recent flight to New York, Draco Slaughter, 75, was arrested on
terrorism-related charges. His crime? He made a bad joke to a flight
attendant. Slaughter did not exactly slay his audience. The joke not
only resulted in a federal criminal charge but could result in seven
years incarceration — the ultimate bomb of a joke.

Government websites such as the TSA’s expressly warn that “jokes … are
not tolerated” and “can result in criminal or civil penalties.” However,
federal law prohibits giving false information “willfully and
maliciously, or with reckless disregard for the safety of human life.”
This is an anti-hoax — not an anti-joke — law designed to punish people
who want to cause panic with false reports. Most joke cases involve
people who clearly indicate at the time that they are joking.

In Slaughter’s case, he joked that “there could be a bomb in there”
when a flight attendant found his bag. Unable to pay a ridiculous
$50,000 bail, he remained in jail. He was not charged with illegal jokes
but falsely reporting an incident. Prosecutors pretended that his joke
was an actual report of a bomb and then charged him for essentially not
having a bomb.

Dozens of travelers are reportedly arrested each year in airports for
making jokes. Most of these arrests are cases of the clueless meeting
the humorless. [Turley]

So, just in case you were wondering what all this means, I would remind you can always tell who controls your life by looking at who you are not allowed to criticize.