Tamera Jo Freeman was on a Frontier Airlines flight to Denver in 2007 when her two children began to quarrel over the window shade and then spilled a Bloody Mary into her lap, reports The Los Angeles Times.
She spanked each of them on the thigh with three swats. It was a small incident, but one that in the bureaucratic world of the PATRIOT Act would eventually have enormous ramifications for Freeman and her children.
A flight attendant confronted Freeman, who responded by hurling a few profanities and throwing what remained of a can of tomato juice on the floor.
The incident aboard the Frontier flight ultimately led to Freeman's arrest and conviction for a federal felony defined as "an act of terrorism" under the PATRIOT Act, in my opinion, one of the most blatantly unconstitutional acts ever passed by the U.S. Congress.
Hardly Terrorists
Freeman is one of at least 200 people on flights who have been convicted under the PATRIOT Act. In almost all of the cases, there was no evidence that the passengers had attempted to hijack the airplane or physically attack any of the flight crew. Many have simply involved raised voices, foul language and drunken behavior and not one could be reasonable described as a terrorist.
(There have also numerous cases in which airlines wrongly have ejected innocent passengers who appeared to be of Arab or Muslim descent and whose action were alleged to be a threat).
The costs of a conviction can be enormous.
In Tamera Freeman's case, it cost her custody of her children. After three months in jail, Freeman agreed to plead guilty in exchange for being released on probation. A court-appointed attorney told her that a plea deal would be the fastest way to see her children, who had been taken back to Hawaii and put into foster care.
Her probation required her to stay in Oklahoma City, where she grew up, and prohibited her from flying. Meanwhile, legal proceedings in Hawaii have begun to allow the children's foster parents to adopt them. Freeman has been denied permission to attend custody hearings in Maui over the last six months, court records show.
"I have cried. I have cried for my children every day," Freeman said. "I feel the system is failing me."
Completely Berserk
"We have gone completely berserk on this issue," said Charles Slepian, a New York security consultant. "These are not threats to national security or threats to aircraft, but we use that as an excuse."
Indeed, the law has given airlines new flexibility to clamp down on unruly behavior. But the intent of the PATRIOT Act was to stop terrorists before they could execute an actual takeover of an aircraft, says Nathan Sales, a law professor at George Mason University who helped write the Act when he served in the U.S. Justice Department.
Obama to the Rescue? Forget It!
Will President Obama now honor his pledge to repeal or at least revise the PATRIOT Act?
During the 2008 Democrat primary campaign the Senator Hillary Clinton took direct aim at Senator Obama, charging: "You said you would vote against the PATRIOT Act; you came to the Senate, you voted for it."
Clinton was correct to say that Obama opposed the PATRIOT Act when he was running for the Senate in 2004. In a 2003 Illinois National Organization for Women questionnaire Obama wrote that he would vote to "repeal the PATRIOT Act" or replace it with a "new, carefully crafted proposal."
When it came time to re-authorize the law in 2005 and again in 2006, the former University of Chicago professor of constitutional law, by then Senator Obama, voted in favor of it.
He also vocally opposed President Bush's illegal wiretapping, but then in 2008, as a presidential candidate, voted to confirm those very same illegal Bush surveillance acts.
Great Assault on Financial Privacy
Within weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks in New York and Washington this Draconian law was rushed through by President George Bush, with the cooperation of panicked politicians from both parties, and without even a final text to be read or debated.
There are many more injustices in this Act other than those being perpetrated by airlines to punish annoying passengers.
The section of the PATRIOT Act, (125 of 362 pages), which pertains to U.S. banking and finance, is the greatest single governmental assault on your and my personal and financial privacy in American history.
If you want to know more about the many dangers to your rights that lurk in this Act, I explain its contents in detail in The PATRIOT Act Report. To learn about this far-reaching invasion of your rights and privacy -- and what you can do about it, get this special report here.
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