This Calls For A Vitter's Rights Amendment

Wingnuts are soiling themselves imagining that this story involves TSA thuggery:

[A woman accompanying her 95 year-old mother, who was in the final stages of lukemia, on a flight to Michigan] said security personnel then came out and told her they would need for her mother to remove her Depends diaper because it was soiled and was impeding their search.

Weber wheeled her mother into a bathroom, removed her diaper and returned. Her mother did not have another clean diaper with her, Weber said.

Weber said she wished there were less invasive search methods for an elderly person who is unable to walk through security gates.

“I don’t understand why they have to put them through that kind of procedure,” she said.

Koshetz said the procedures are the same for everyone to ensure national security.

“TSA cannot exempt any group from screening because we know from intelligence that there are terrorists out there that would then exploit that vulnerability,” she said.

Weber filed a complaint through Northwest Florida Regional’s website. She said she received a response from a Homeland Security representative at the airport on Tuesday and spoke to that person on the phone Wednesday.

The representative told her that personnel had followed procedures during the search, Weber said.

“Then I thought, if you’re just following rules and regulations, then the rules and regulations need to be changed,” she said.

Weber said she plans to file additional complaints next week.

“I’m not one to make waves, but dadgummit, this is wrong. People need to know. Next time it could be you.”

Well, dagnabit, but the way this goldurn story is reported, I can't feign any rackinfrackin outrage.

The story isn't "federal agents ordered [woman's] elderly mother to remove her adult diaper," as one incontinent wingnut would have it. (No link to the nut.) The elderly woman had a soiled adult diaper, the TSA alerted the woman's mother to the problem, and the woman didn't have a spare diaper for her mother to use. Were TSA agents supposed to allow the woman to remain in her own waste? I'm not saying the daughter was negligent in not preparing for her mother's travel, because there may be more to the story. (I'm also not commenting on why the mother's family members would make their wheelchair bound, incontinent, dying 95-year-old relative fly to Michigan, rather than getting their own asses on a flight to Florida. Maybe they were older and sicker.)

But the story is not that the TSA agents searched the diaper, or ordered the mother to remove the diaper so they could search underneath the diaper. It's not to hard to imagine that the agents were simply discreetly advising the daughter of her mother's problem, which the daughter was unaware of.

The real stink here is coming from the racist wingnuts who, admittedly, have good cause to fear that someone will uncover their own hidden apparel. And its contents.