Of course, that would never really happen... would it?



In the local news report above, which my colleague James Fallows notes here, a Tennessee TV news broadcast reports that TSA is already operating on highways in the state. The brilliant reasoning? "Where is a terrorist more apt to be found? Not these days on an airplane more likely on the interstate," said Tennessee Department of Safety & Homeland Security Commissioner Bill Gibbons. Perhaps he can be forgiven for this absurd quote. After all, his job is to keep Tennessee safe from terrorists. By definition he's guarding against a remote threat. But it ought to make us all upset that the federal government assessed its counter-terrorism resources and decided that the best use of scarce funds would be random checks on vehicles on Tennessee highways.

Feel safer?

The TSA agents are urging all drivers to "say something" if they see something suspicious, which brings us to another great quote from the piece: "If somebody sees something somewhere, we want them to be responsible citizens," says Paul Armes, TSA Federal Security Director. "Report that and let us work it through our processes to vet the concern they had when they saw something suspicious." Granted, if I were driving (rather than traveling by train) to Chattanooga, and I saw an 18 wheeler with a "Death to America" bumper sticker and fertilizer spilling out the back, I'd call the cops; but if there were any actual terrorists on the highways of Tennessee, wouldn't their explosive filled truck look, from the outside, like any other truck?

The last thing America needs is to let TSA and its absurd, security-theater loving bureaucrats out of the airport. Reports a local newspaper: "Larry Godwin, deputy commissioner of TDSHS, said the checks at the weigh stations were about showing the people of Tennessee the government is serious about transportation safety." But quotes like that in fact show that they aren't serious about transportation safety so much as the appearance of it. I'd consent to beefing up airport security even more if it meant being able to keep TSA agents inside the terminal. The notion of random searches spreading everywhere in American life, whether you're exercising the "privilege" of going to a sporting event or driving down the highway, amounts to an unconstitutional surrender to terrorism in places where we've never even been hit by it.





Image credit: Reuters

