Sixty-two-year-old Phyllis Dintenfass resisted the ridiculous airport security and now stands in danger of losing everything. The folks at Lew Rockwell come to her (and Martha Stewart's) defense. Link. Excerpt:
Phyllis had the guts to do what so many of us have so often longed to: when an airport screener got frisky, Phyllis groped her in turn and demanded, "How would you like it if I did that to you?"
The retiree's criminal career began last September, when she was pulled aside for "secondary screening" at a regional airport in Wisconsin. Terrorists have, of course, tried to take out many skyscrapers and cows in the upper Midwest, and they flood through the regional airports there at the rate of nine or ten per day. So the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) was ready when Phyllis triggered the metal detectors. A female supervisor led her to a private area and conducted what the TSA euphemizes as a "limited pat-down procedure."
Phyllis called it something else: "She was feeling me up." She testified at her trial last week that she "felt violated." She told her attacker, "'I don't like you feeling me up.' [The screener] said, 'I'm not feeling you up.' I told her, 'My husband's been feeling me up for 40 years. I know what that feels like...'" Phyllis then returned the favor. Not surprisingly, the screener objected when what she'd done unto others was done unto her. So much, in fact, that she called the cops on Phyllis. And so this older lady whom friends characterize as mild-mannered, whose interests run not to murder and mayhem but to "art, textiles and education issues," was dragged into a Wisconsin courtroom. There the government tried her for "assaulting" its minion. The jury actually deliberated about whether we serfs may defend ourselves from Our Masters' sexual abuse. Stunningly, they decided we may not.
Let's give these twelve twits what they didn't give Phyllis, the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps they're decent folks with functioning brains driven temporarily insane by the fierce July heat. Or perhaps they're androids programmed to kiss Leviathan's hindquarters. Maybe it's a combination of the two. At any rate, Phyllis now faces a year in prison and $100,000 in fines when she's sentenced in November.
The prosecutor, U.S. Attorney Steven Biskupic, is young enough to be Phyllis' son. His take on the case, according to the Associated Press, is that "TSA officers perform a vital service and are entitled to protection from assault." Really, Steve? Would you call it a "vital service" had your mother been groped? Should she be arrested and tried for defending herself? Would you prosecute her, knowing she could be imprisoned and bankrupted because she fought back?
