[Mb-civic] ramifications

[IHHS at aol.com]

62 year old woman found guilty of assaulting a federal
aviation security  staff  member

http://www.thenewamerican.com/artman/publish/article_1932.shtml

Making  War on the American Public
by William Norman Grigg
July 27, 2005

In  another triumph for "homeland security,"
62-year-old retired schoolteacher  Phyllis Dintenfass
faces imprisonment and financial ruin. Her  "crime"?
Reciprocating the "helpful" behavior of a federal
airport  security screener.

Phyllis Dintenfass is an unassuming,  62-year-old
retired teacher from Appleton, Wisconsin. John C. Yoo
is a law  professor at the University of
California-Berkeley, and a former high-ranking  legal
adviser to President Bush. Yoo was a chief author of
the so-called  USA PATRIOT act, and helped shape the
Bush administration’s  quasi-totalitarian "homeland
security"

ideology. Mrs. Dintenfass, who  has never committed a
crime against persons or property, faces a year  in
prison and $100,000 in fines as a result of her
collision with a  federal official acting on that
ideology.

Last September, Mrs.  Dintenfass and her husband were
passing through security prior to a flight  at
Appleton’s Outagamie County Regional Airport. Since
something she wore  repeatedly triggered metal
detectors, Mrs. Dintenfass was taken to a  "secondary
screening area" by a Transportation Security
Administration  (TSA) supervisor named Anita Gostisha.
The would-be passenger meekly complied  as Gostisha
used an electronic "wand" to scan for metal  objects.

Gostisha then used the back of her hands to check the
area  beneath Dintenfass’s breasts, provoking her to
"lash out." According to  Dintenfass, her reaction was
to reciprocate the unwanted and uninvited  physical
contact while saying, "How would you like it if I did
that to  you?" Gostisha claims that the middle-aged
woman – uniformly described as  mild-mannered and
inoffensive – also "slammed her against the wall,"
which  would certainly be a proportionate response to
what reasonable people would  consider a sexual
assault.

Dintenfass flatly denies shoving the TSA  official. In
any case, she was arrested and charged with
"assaulting" a  federal official. A federal jury found
her guilty of that supposed crime on  July 26.
Sentencing will occur on November 1.

Dintenfass "punished  Anita Gostisha for doing her
job," complained federal Prosecutor Tim Funnell.  U.S.
Attorney Steven Bispukic added that TSA officers, who
perform a  "vital function" are "entitled to protection
from assault."

Perhaps  the only positive aspect of this case is that
we now have an official  acknowledgment from federal
attorneys that the invasive, degrading  physical
contact regularly inflicted on air travelers by TSA
drones is a  form of "punishment" and "assault." But
this implicit admission is bundled  with the assumption
that federal officials, who belong to a  specially
privileged and protected class, are entitled to
assault common  citizens – in the name of "homeland
security," naturally.

This is a  splendid example of the ideology John C. Yoo
helped devise on behalf of the  Bush administration.
Yoo’s influence was felt not only in the creation  of
the so-called PATRIOT Act, but also in a September 25,
2001 memorandum  entitled "The President’s
Constitutional Authority to Conduct  Military
Operations Against Terrorists and Nations Supporting
Them" and a  January 2002 legal brief arguing that
enemy troops captured in Afghanistan  and elsewhere are
not entitled to the protection of the  Geneva
Conventions.

Digested to its essence, the legal doctrine Yoo  helped
compose is this: The President, and those who act on
his behalf,  are entitled to do anything to anyone as
long as it is done in the name of  fighting terrorism.

This claim was made explicitly in the September  25,
2001 memorandum, which held that "the Constitution
vests the President  with the plenary authority, as
Commander in Chief and the sole organ of the  Nation in
its foreign relations, to use military force abroad,"
and that  neither Congress nor the courts can "place
any limits on the President's  determinations as to any
terrorist threat, the amount of military force to  be
used in response, or the method, timing, and nature of
the  response."

The PATRIOT [sic] Act and related "homeland  security"
measures represent the same claim of open-ended and
unqualified  presidential power with respect to
domestic affairs. As Yoo explained in a  February 24,
2004 interview with the California Patriot, a
GOP-aligned  student publication, the Bush
administration’s homeland security doctrine is  based
on the idea that "no artificial line could be drawn
between foreign  and domestic threats." The primary
achievement of the PATRIOT Act, Yoo  continued, "was
taking down the artificial line."

As Yoo put it in a  separate interview, the executive
branch is now "using the legal tools of  wartime" in
dealing with matters of domestic security. In essence,
this  approach permits the President and his minions to
make war on the American  public – in the name of
"protecting" us.

Yoo has described himself as  a person who subscribes
to "the basic Republican beliefs," which in his  view
include "limited government in areas aside from
foreign affairs and  security and government
intervention should be as narrow as  possible."
(Emphasis added.) Which is to say that government
intervention  can continue indefinitely, as long it is
conducted in the name of  "security."

In his continuing role as an informal adviser, Yoo  is
urging the Bush administration to continue its assault
on the  Constitution and the liberties it protects.

In a recent Los Angeles Times  op-ed column, he
referred to the need to "change … the way the  United
States deals with Islam" as part of a campaign to
"discredit"  al-Qaeda and other radical Islamist
movements. "Under the Constitution’s  religion
clauses," Yoo points out, "the government can neither
support nor  interfere with religion"; however, he
continued, the federal government "must  support
moderate versions [of Islam] compatible with democracy
and  markets. The United States must ask the courts to
give us flexibility to  combat fundamentalist Islam as
it would any other hostile  ideology…."

By "flexibility," Yoo clearly intimates an approach  to
religious liberty that would permit the feds to
subject religious  associations and gatherings to
official scrutiny, or perhaps even some  variety of
official regulation. And it shouldn’t be assumed that
the  suddenly flexible feds would direct such treatment
exclusively at Muslim  "fundamentalists."

Consider this. Most suicide bombers are young  Muslim
males, not white, middle-aged retired female
schoolteachers from  Appleton, Wisconsin. Yet federal
policy required that Phyllis Dintenfass  undergo a body
search. As a result, she now faces imprisonment  and
financial ruin because of her understandable reaction.
This does  nothing to protect the public from
terrorism, but a great deal to reinforce  the idea of
illimitable federal power – which is, apparently, the
entire  point of the "war on terrorism."


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