Freedom to Travel Event, Part 4

[KBCraig]

A friend of our who travels a lot said it's a 9/11 rule.

Before 9/11, most airlines refused to transfer tickets. "Nope, sorry, the other person will have to buy their own ticket, and you'll have to eat the cost of yours!"

Now, I believe it is a TSA requirement, for passenger manifests and such. Perhaps Varrin will have more information.

Kevin

[Michael Fisher]

You could theoretically get the boarding pass online, refuse to show ID, and put up with a pat-down if you wanted to.

[KBCraig]

You could theoretically get the boarding pass online, refuse to show ID, and put up with a pat-down if you wanted to.

You've a devious mind, Mr. Fisher.

I admire that in a conspirator! 

Kevin

[GT]

You could theoretically get the boarding pass online, refuse to show ID, and put up with a pat-down if you wanted to.

I could put up with that with teeth clenched. My sons friend is twelve and I'm not going to ask him to do that. There is also the issue of getting out of the US and then AA denny boarding coming back. I'm sure his parents would be pretty irked if the did'nt let him on the plane.

I think their policy stinks. If it's the company policy that's one thing. If this is another TSA government mandated thing that's completely different. If I'm going to loose the 600 maybe I'll cut the trip down to a long weekend or something.

[Russell Kanning]

You could theoretically get the boarding pass online, refuse to show ID, and put up with a pat-down if you wanted to.

I could put up with that with teeth clenched.

You might not have a choice....they can do that to anyone.
Last time I was at the airport the TSA agent was enjoying an extended "wand down" of an attractive young lady

[Dreepa]

Last time I was at the airport

The last time they arrested you right?

[Kat Kanning]

No, we picked up Kira a week or so ago.

[Kat Kanning]

Governors: Drivers License Costs to Soar

By ROBERT TANNER, AP National Writer Mon Jul 18, 2:34 AM ET

DES MOINES, Iowa - In the name of homeland security, motorists are going to see costs skyrocket for driver's licenses and motor vehicle offices forced to operate like local branches of the
FBI, the nation's governors warn.
ADVERTISEMENT

The new federal law squeezed this spring into an $82 billion spending bill had Republican and Democrat governors fuming at their summer meeting here, and vowing to bring their complaints to
Homeland Security Secretary
Michael Chertoff at a Monday meeting.

"It's outrageous to pass this off on the states," said Republican Mike Huckabee of Arkansas, incoming chairman of the National Governors Association. "You're essentially asking the front-line clerks at the DMV to become an INS agent and a law enforcement agent."

The law that passed in June goes beyond an earlier law that sought to standardize state driver's licenses, requiring that states verify license applicants are American citizens or legal residents.

"This is going to drive the cost of driver's licenses for ordinary folks through the roof," said Democrat Tom Vilsack of Iowa. "I think it's going to drive people crazy."

The law would demand skills of motor vehicle office clerks far beyond what is currently expected, governors said.

Democrat Bill Richardson of New Mexico said the law, known as the REAL ID Act, unconstitutionally infringed upon state laws such as his, where illegal immigrants have been able to get licenses.

New Mexico's approach made roads safer since licensed immigrants could get insured, helped the state keep track of immigrants, and also helped integrate immigrants into the community, he said.

"It's a shortsighted, ill-conceived initiative," Richardson said. "We'll challenge it constitutionally."

On Sunday, governors said they'd agreed on a months-long bipartisan proposal to improve the federal-state Medicaid program. They said it should help slow the program's soaring costs, and let states experiment with more effective ways to deliver health care.

If accepted in Washington, the governors' plan would allow states to demand co-payments from poor, disabled and women with children, and add tools to curb seniors from giving relatives their assets so they could get Medicaid-funded long-term care.

Sen. Charles Grassley (news, bio, voting record), the Iowa Republican who chairs the
Senate Finance Committee, said the governors' work was crucial to winning agreement in Congress on any Medicaid changes.
President Bush wants to trim the growth in the program by $10 billion over five years.

The governors proposal "is really key to getting something done. We will not get a bipartisan agreement in Congress without a bipartisan agreement from the governors," Grassley said after meeting privately with governors.

Governors also took aim at a piece of Bush's new Medicare drug prescription policy, with more than a dozen weighing a legal fight to challenge part of the new law.

Their concerns centered on a relatively small portion of the policy that would affect the elderly who are poor enough to qualify for Medicaid and old enough to qualify for Medicare.

Governors have long argued that the federal government should pay the costs of that group, which are significantly higher per person than for the rest of the Medicaid population.

The new Medicare law means the federal government nominally takes over responsibility for that group, but requires states to continue to pay the overwhelming majority of the bill for their drugs by sending cash to Washington. Many governors said the complex and cumbersome federal formula means they would pay more money than before.

Texas and New Hampshire have put aside the money they would send to the federal government to cover those drug benefits until the dispute is resolved. Republican Rick Perry of Texas wrote a letter to fellow governors arguing they should work together to change the federal policy.

___

On the Net:

National Governors Association: http://www.nga.org

[Dreepa]

so my wife's dl expires tomorrow... why get a new one when we are leaving.
She was worried about getting on the airplane on Wed to NH... I said don't worry you don't have to show ID. 

But damn if she doesn't need to rent a car in NH.

She went to the DMV today... I taught my 3 year old a new word.  Bureaucracy.

[Russell Kanning]

That is a word not to be used in polite company

[Dreepa]

I believe that it is on par with NY Yankee.

[Kat Kanning]

Great airport article:

http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig3/calderwood8.html

Primitive Superstitions

by David Calderwood

I recently returned to the U.S. from a vacation to Mexico and my mal-experience with the Transportation Security Administration afforded me an opportunity to reflect on one of the many absurd things most Americans accept without question.

Passing through Sanford Airport near Orlando, FL I was selected for the "Full Monty" by TSA. Late for a connecting flight and rather short on patience, the extended pat down (which included the Chief Groper running his fingers along the inside of my front waistband) seemed to accentuate my hearing. I actually overheard someone say that they felt safer for all the intrusiveness. Since I love analogies, I came up with one that I believe captures the delusional nature of this view.

    Consider if one is looking for a needle in haystacks, and haystacks are passing through one?s presence on an hourly basis. Would anyone grab a random handful of each haystack that passed by and expect to find said needle by examining in minute detail each piece of hay in that handful?

Of course not. Yet most air travelers think an invasive search of a 45-year-old man traveling with his wife and kids, or running a rod down the skin-tight top between the breasts of a pretty 16-year-old blond girl with a tan and painted nails (all 20 of them ? I counted) makes them safer. I might join the march in the streets protesting this idiocy, but of course I?d be the only one on parade. My fellow citizens might even be provoked by my lack of support for our nation?s hardworking security people.

We all hear and read how we all will somehow benefit as the government takes over more and more elements of our lives. The notion that the government is best equipped to control everything from product safety to national defense and from environmental protection to education seems to be almost universally accepted. Part of the unanimity of this view may stem from our major news organs? almost total reliance on government officials and politicians for their stories, but I could be wrong. Maybe it?s not just that they?re lazy sloths.

Well over a thousand years ago Mayans performed a serious ritual in the Ball Court at Chichen-Itza in the Yucatan Peninsula. They endeavored to put a heavy rubber ball through a stone ring without using their hands, an act associated with protecting the Sun as their astronomer-priests told of its passage through a dangerous part of the universe. As I understood our Mayan tour guide, their people took this process very seriously, probably no less so than the TSA grope-master who "protected" my flight by the laying on of hands (on me, that is, while his female counterpart "sanctified" that pretty teenager). All that was missing from my experience were the scary mask and magic totems. On second thought, maybe magic wands were in use after all, and the guy?s face was, I suppose, a little scary.

At the end of my Mexican stay (before my undesired, intimate episode with that strange TSA man) I stood in line at Cancun?s airport and waited for my checked baggage to be laboriously hand-searched (no doubt an FAA requirement for planes headed to U.S. airports) while those lucky Canadians on a direct flight to Edmonton walked straight to their check-in without the lines and the hassles. (The government in Ottawa apparently spends less time aggravating people in other lands?gee, how lucky are we in the U.S. to have our officials in Washington DC create new adventures for us continuously.)

Consider today?s obvious similarities to the rituals and superstitions of people who lived long ago. From newspaper publishers and Harvard Ph.D.?s to Mrs Grundy living next door, people we share this country with haven?t changed much over the centuries, have they? They?re still sacrificing much of their harvest to the Gods (well, the warrior/priests take it and we assume pass it along) and performing human sacrifices (lots and lots of them in Iraq and Afghanistan these days) to insure our group?s continued success. So must it be ? our warrior/priests in Washington DC?s big stone temples tell us so.

August 12, 2005

David Calderwood [send him mail] a businessman, artist, and author of the novel Revolutionary Language, selected January 2000 Freedom Book of the Month at Free-market.net.

[Kat Kanning]

Another one today:

The Right to Travel

by C.T. Rossi
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig5/rossi5.html

August is the traditional month for vacations. Most of us take for granted the ability to load up the family station wagon and travel wherever the steering wheel leads us. The right to travel has been held sacrosanct. But this right, which we consider quintessentially American, is beginning to show cracks in the foundation.

Travel is essential for the development of the human person. In its most banal, materialistic and uninspired comprehension, a trip is merely the transportation of the self from one spot to another. However, from the literature of the ancients up to our present day, there is a realization that travel has a higher function. In most all of the fables of the world, someone somewhere decides that he must go to another place and, by making this decision, the world ultimately becomes a different place or is viewed so by the sojourner. Without freedom of movement, how could the literature of the quest take form? (Today, Hercules? true labor would be obtaining documentation to get to the spots of his various chores.)

The spiritual component of travel is integral to Western culture. Abraham was commanded by God to travel out of the land of his fathers, while Moses, through divine intervention, won the right of egress out of Egypt for the Israelites. Christ was constantly on the move, from mountaintop to valley, in and out of different districts and lands, while St. Paul is the finest exemplar of the soul-changing events that can happen "on the road."

Freedom to move means freedom to conduct trade and to learn first-hand about other cultures ? a component of education once deemed essential. The broadening of external horizons seems to lead naturally to the broadening of internal horizons.

The antipode, restrictions on the individual?s right to move about, can logically be assumed to retard the virtues nourished by travel. One shackled, either figuratively or literally, to the land is one whose knowledge is limited, whose spirit is reigned in, and whose ability to conduct business is stifled. In the eyes of the well-traveled, a serf is stunted almost to the level of the beast; he lacks not only raw exposure to the outside world but, more importantly, a frame of reference.

So important was the right to travel to the men of medieval England that it is found in the Magna Carta:

    It shall be lawful to any person, for the future, to go out of our kingdom, and to return, safely and securely, by land or by water, saving his allegiance to us, unless it be in time of war, for some short space, for the common good of the kingdom: excepting prisoners and outlaws, according to the laws of the land, and of the people of the nation at war against us, and Merchants who shall be treated as it is said above.

The only time that the Crown was allowed to restrict travel was during war for "some short space." This seems to imply that a travel restriction placed upon an enemy combatant nation for the entire duration of the conflict was deemed as unreasonably long and unnecessary.

These "rights of Englishmen" rooted in the Magna Carta were intimately understood by the Founders. Yet, over the course of this century, the American judiciary has been steadily whittling away at the right of travel.

There is no express right to travel found in the Constitution, unlike the Articles of Confederation which provided for "free ingress and regress to and from any other State." Taking advantage of this omission, the Supreme Court declared, in Zemel v. Rusk, that Congress has the power to enable the President to restrict travel to certain countries. At issue was whether a U.S. citizen could travel to Cuba in 1965, a country with whom we were not at war, in order "to satisfy [his] curiosity . . . and to make [him] a better informed citizen." Despite the rights granted in the Magna Carta, to which Americans are heirs via the Common Law, the Court ruled against curiosity and a well-informed citizenry.

However, in 1999, the Supreme Court found it necessary to dress up a welfare case in a "right to travel" bonnet. They did so to assure that states? rights did include the ability to restrain the handouts of the welfare state (see Saenz v. Roe). Rather than look to the Articles as a founding document of the United States (a precedent which would have been subversive to centralized power), they plunked the right to travel in the Privileges and Immunities clause of the 14th Amendment ? a legal "dead letter" for more than 120 years. They then proudly proclaimed, "The Court today breathes new life into the previously dormant Privileges or Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment?".

The test case against the right to free movement is now being tried, not in the legal system, but in the court of public opinion through the saga of the "runaway bride" Jennifer Wilbanks. This week Wilbanks? face has been splashed across media outlets, as she "pays off her debt to the community" for "lying to the police."

Wilbanks ran away four days before her pending marriage. This was not a criminal act. Her hometown of Duluth, Georgia began a search for her, expending more than $40,000, even though her escape plan began with a call to a local cab service requesting a pick-up at the local library and drop-off at the bus station (a fact that would seem likely to emerge from preliminary police work).

Wilbanks, on the day scheduled for her wedding, telephoned her fianc? to give him a bogus story about how she had been abducted and was in New Mexico. At this time, she repeated the story to the Duluth chief of police who was with her fianc?. This was a lie on the part of Wilbanks, but a lie that sent New Mexican police into action, not Duluth police. Through this lie, she caused the misappropriation of Albuquerque law enforcement resources to search for her fictional abductors. Duluth police had been searching prior to her lie and her story gave them no reason for additional expenditures of manpower or resources as all the alleged, albeit fictional, criminal parties were in New Mexico. Authorities in Albuquerque officials decided not to prosecute; Duluth officials did.

Her lie cost Duluth nothing, yet she is now mowing the lawn of city hall to "repay her debt." In a wonderful Orwellian touch, this indentured servant to the state wears a "life is good" ball cap as she struggles away with a lawn mower to give restitution to a city that suffered no damage from her acts. She and, by media extension, all of us, have now been properly reeducated that the real crime isn?t lying but not letting the government know where you are. (This exact same scenario is now being played out again in Salt Lake City, where a man who legally and voluntarily decided to disappear to Australia is now being asked to pay for a search that he did not ask for or induce.)

There is a word for those who are not only restricted from traveling where they desire, but also must "check in" with an authority before absenting themselves. That word is slave.

August 12, 2005

C.T. Rossi [send him mail] recent law school graduate who lives in Washington, D.C.

[Kat Kanning]

This should include anyone who voted for RealID, in my opinion. 


http://www.freecannon.com/ShunIDEnablers.htm
"Shunning the Real ID Enablers"

Published 15 August 2005

(word count: 750)

Freedom's latest foe is the two-headed snake-in-the-grass Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft.  These cyberserpents are collaborating to create the hardware/software mission of turning us all into walking talking Real ID card chattel.  (Quickie definition of Real ID: a thin slice of plastic containing our digitized biological and biographical persona so BigGov can steal our identities whenever it wishes.)

I was already soured on Hewlett-Packard.  Two years back a pack of powercrats came up with a concept called the Continuity of Government Commission.  Terrified that all of their kind could be killed in a single blow (a hand grenade tossed from a two-seater Cessna, perhaps) and we lackeys might learn to like life without our liege lords, the COG wanted to empower state Governors to cherry-pick replacement masters, not via special elections (Constitutional) but from their own personal wish lists (unconstitutional).

Noting that COG ought to stand for Congress Of Goons, I further noted that this BigGov plot was supported by the likes of the Hewlett and Packard Foundations.  To quote myself: "Everything on my desktop is Hewlett-Packard.  My computer, my printer, my scanner, my fax, my CD reader-writer, my cheap little promo pen with the lower case hp logo."

Then I sputtered indignantly, "I feel a boycott coming on.  What's the phone number for Dell?"

Since then, my eight-year-old Pentium II kicked the bit bucket and went to that great Norton Protected Recycle Bin in the sky.  I didn?t even consider an HP replacement.  Viewing TV commercials that gushed, "I'm getting a Dell, Dude," I got a Dell, Dude.

And all those HP peripherals have been replaced by a single Epson All-In-One printer/copier/scanner/fax/toaster oven/wine press/nose hair trimmer.

In the not yet foreseeable future I?ll be latching onto a laptop.  It won?t, as a matter of principle, be an HP.  And that principle requires, as principles ought, a small sacrifice on my part.  An HP employee/family member that shall remain anonymous could easily buy me a laptop with his/her employee discount.  But I'll forego that advantage and obtain an Anything Else brand instead.  A costlier Not-HP is now my purchase preference.

Microsoft is another matter.  The MS colossus is a de facto standard.  Yes, you cyber-encephalons will eagerly ballyhoo the benefits of Microsoftless open source alternatives.  But I'm a freelance technical writer and my day jobs demand working with Windows wares.  Besides, as a keyboard jockey, my computer is like my car ? it's just something that takes me where I want to go.  I'm neither a computer nor auto mechanic.

So how do I boycott the behemoth?

If I want to be a charitable chap, I'll remember how the DC bureaugoons punished the Gates gang with their antitrust attack for having committed the sin of succeeding while not lining their larcenous pockets from Gates' profits.  An argument could be made that Microsoft has teamed with HP because they learned their antitrust lesson (cooperate with the Capitol Crooks or get pummeled by the powercrats).

Maybe that's too charitable.  More likely, the Redmond monster is simply sniffing along the profits trail, unmindful of the difference between income from product sales and income from taxpayer-stolen government gelt.

At the very least, we need to remind them of that difference.

So, in addition to my personal HP prohibition, I've launched my anti-Microsoft mission ? I'm joining the Browser Wars.

No, I'm not getting next to Netscape.  I long ago elevated my nostrils at those low-level lowlifes.  Netscape, being one of those incompetents unable to compete with MS, whined piteously for awhile, then joined the likes of Sun and Oracle who decided to sic their paid antitrust bureaudogs on 'em.  The only reason Navigator darkens my desktop today is to make sure my web site properly displays for those of you who are Netscapers.

For all my everyday browsing business, I'm now foraging with Firefox.

Will refusing to purchase HP or use Explorer make any difference?  Gunners groups snubbed Smith & Wesson when they caved to Clintonista demands that BigGov Bureaubullies boss their business.  They survived, according to an LA Times tale, only because "After a change of ownership, Smith & Wesson cooled on the agreement, and President Bush allowed the company to back out of it."

So maybe if all libertarians refused to hang with HP or go site-seeing with Explorer, we'll read a story someday about how "HP and MS cooled on the Real ID agreement, and President Hillary (or is that Condoleezza?) allowed the companies to back out of it."

Hey, a boycott is a beginning.

- by Garry Reed

[KBCraig]

Babies Caught Up in 'No-Fly' Confusion
Location: Washington
Posted: August 15, 2005 3:03 PM EST
URL: http://www.wjla.com/news/stories/0805/252009.html

Washington (AP) - 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."

The government's lists of people who are either barred from flying or require extra scrutiny before being allowed to board airplanes grew markedly since the Sept. 11 attacks. Critics including the American Civil Liberties Union say the government doesn't provide enough information about the people on the lists, so innocent passengers can be caught up in the security sweep if they happen to have the same name as someone on the lists.

That can happen even if the person happens to be an infant like Sanden's daughter. (Children under 2 don't need tickets but Sanden purchased one for her daughter to ensure she had a seat.)

"It was bizarre," Sanden said. "I was hugely pregnant, and I was like, 'We look really threatening.'"

Sarah Zapolsky and her husband had a similar experience last month while departing from Dulles International Airport outside Washington. An airline ticket agent told them their 11-month-old son was on the government list.

They were able to board their flight after ticket agents took a half-hour to fax her son's passport and fill out paperwork.

"I understand that security is important," Zapolsky said. "But if they're just guessing, and we have to give up our passport to prove that our 11-month-old is not a terrorist, it's a waste of their time."

Well-known people like Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., and David Nelson, who starred in the sitcom "The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet," also have been stopped at airports because their names match those on the lists.

The government has sought to improve its process for checking passengers since the Sept. 11 attacks. The first attempt was scuttled because of fears the government would have access to too much personal information. A new version, called Secure Flight, is being crafted.

But for now, airlines still have the duty to check passengers' names against those supplied by the government. That job has become more difficult - since the 2001 attacks the lists have swelled from a dozen or so names to more than 100,000 names, according to people in the aviation industry who are familiar with the issue. They asked not to be identified by name because the exact number is restricted information.

Not all those names are accompanied by biographical information that can more closely identify the suspected terrorists. That can create problems for people who reserve flights under such names as "T Kennedy" or "David Nelson."

ACLU lawyer Tim Sparapani said the problem of babies stopped by the no-fly list illustrates some of the reasons the lists don't work.

"There's no oversight over the names," Sparapani said. "We know names are added hastily, and when you have a name-based system you don't focus on solid intelligence leads. You focus on names that are similar to those that might be suspicious."

The Transportation Security Administration, which administers the lists, instructs airlines not to deny boarding to children under 12 - or select them for extra security checks - even if their names match those on a list.

But it happens anyway. Debby McElroy, president of the Regional Airline Association, said: "Our information indicates it happens at every major airport."

The TSA has a "passenger ombudsman" who will investigate individual claims from passengers who say they are mistakenly on the lists. TSA spokeswoman Yolanda Clark said 89 children have submitted their names to the ombudsman. Of those, 14 are under the age of 2.

If the ombudsman determines an individual should not be stopped, additional information on that person is included on the list so he or she is not stopped the next time they fly.

Clark said even with the problems the lists are essential to keeping airline passengers safe.