Privacy Group Presses Challenge to TSA's Body-Imaging Machinery

The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) will go to federal court on Thursday to press its substantive challenge to the TSA's rollout of whole body imagers, as the TSA used to call the machines before somebody there decided to find a less alarming euhpemism, "advanced imaging technology."

Some critics merely call the devices, which the TSA plans eventually to use as a replacement for magnetometers at all 2,000 airport checkpoints, "strip-search machines." There are now 486 machines in place at 78 airports, the TSA says.

The EPIC president, Marc Rotenberg, a lawyer, is scheduled to present arguments against the TSA body scanner program on Thursday before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The petition seeks a court order suspending the program.

EPIC calls the body-scanners "invasive, unlawful, and ineffective," and argues that the TSA's deployment of the devices for primary screening violates the U.S. Constitution and several federal statutes.

Here is the full text of the EPIC opening brief.

Here is the TSA's Web site on the machines, with links to all of the agency's arguments in favor of the technology.

EPIC asserts that the Department of Homeland Security "has initiated the most sweeping, the most invasive, and the most unaccountable suspicionless search of American travelers in history."

Besides EPIC, the petitioners are Chip Pitts, the immediate past-president of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, who is a lecturer at Stanford Law School and the former chairman of Amnesty International USA; Bruce Schneier, an internationally known security technologist and author; and Nadhira Al-Khalili, legal counsel for the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

Here are the main arguments in the EPIC petition:

--The full body scanner program violates the Administrative Procedure Act.

--The TSA improperly processed EPIC’s Section 553(e) petitions and the Homeland Security Department Privacy Office failed to comply with its statutory mandate to protect travelers’ privacy.

--The body scanner program violates the Fourth Amendment protection against improper searches.

--The program violates the Privacy Act, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and the Video Voyeurism Prevention Act.

***

Some excerpts from the petition:

--"Respondent agency has initiated the most sweeping, the most invasive, and
the most unaccountable suspicionless search of American travelers in history.
Respondent has subjected millions of air travelers to suspicionless searches that
target the most intimate areas of the human body. It has deployed devices, of its
own design, that have the ability to store, record, and transmit these images of the
naked human body. And it has done so in disregard of federal statutes and
Constitutional safeguards that are intended to protect the privacy and religious
rights of individuals and to ensure accountability in agency decision-making. It has
even disregarded a federal privacy law that explicitly prohibits the capture of
naked images by federal officials where there is a reasonable expectation of
privacy."

--"Following respondent’s failure to act on either the First EPIC Petition or the
Second EPIC Petition, as well as the concerns expressed by members of Congress,
and anticipating the Respondent’s intent to accelerate the deployment of body
scanners in U.S. airports, petitioner filed a motion for emergency stay of the
agency’s Rule on July 2, 2010."

--"During the spring of 2009, respondent DHS made a determination that body
scanners, which were previously only deployed for secondary screening in limited
pilot projects, would in the future be deployed as the primary screening technique
in U.S. airports."

--"[The machines'] capabilities enable the capture, storage, and transfer of the images of the naked human body. The machines run an embedded version of Microsoft Windows XP (XPe) that is prone to security vulnerabilities."

--"Travelers have expressed outrage at the invasiveness of the machines, the radiation exposure created by the machines, the lack of signage regarding the machines, and the absence of a meaningful alternative to the scans."

--"Experts in radiology and security have questioned the safety of the machines, and their effectiveness (especially regarding the detection of powdered explosives)."

--"There are proposed alternatives to body scanners, including less intrusive
passive millimeter wave technology and filters that indicate potential threats on an
avatar instead of an actual passenger image. A Jan. 27, 2010, Government Accountability Office report states that TSA has ten passenger screening technologies in various phases of research, procurement, and development."

--"The TSA does not, in practice, offer air travelers an alternative to the body
scanner search. ... The petition quotes travelers on their experiences: [An] air traveler stated that 'when he requested an
alternative screening, the TSA screeners interrogated and laughed at him.') ... 'I was asked/forced into this [body scanner] at BWI airport on 6/30/09.' ... 'I am outraged and angry that what was supposed to be a ‘pilot’ for the millimeter scan machines has now become mandatory at SFO.'"

--"Instead, the TSA claims to offer passengers a pat-down alternative, but many
passengers are never informed of this option. ... 'I was not verbally notified by any TSA official that the Full Body scan was optional … I did not observe any written notice or signage that indicated the full body scan was optional … I have no reason to believe that any traveler who went through security screening at Logan Airport at that time would have been told that the full body scan was optional or that there was an alternative security screening procedure.'"

--"Passengers perceive the pat-down to represent a retaliatory measure for those who do object to the body scanners. '[I] decided to opt out [of a body scan]. My family and I were then subjected to a punitive pat-down search (they went over me three times) that would have been considered sexual assault in any other context."

--"As a matter of pattern, practice and policy, the TSA visually matches air
travelers’ photo ID cards with their boarding passes when travelers pass through
airport security checkpoints. The TSA scans air traveler’s boarding passes,
collecting air travelers’ personal information, when travelers pass through airport
security checkpoints that are equipped with paperless boarding pass scanners.
The TSA is therefore able to associate a specific body-scanner image with the full name, birth date, gender, and travel itinerary of the scanned traveler."

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Luckily, the Flight Attendant Didn't Stash the Baby in the Cargo Hold, Because That Would Have Been an Extra $25

A flight attendant on Virgin Blue Airways was fired after that (male) flight attendant stowed a female passenger's 17-month-old son in an overhead bin and shut the hatch during a flight from Fiji to Sydney. The stunt was evidently supposed to be a joke, and the woman's now-estranged husband was part of it.

Here's the report.

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A Flying Myth ...

Patrick Smith's "Ask the Pilot" column in Salon is always informative and sometimes myth-busting, as is today's.

Patrick, a pilot for a major airline who flies international routes, takes on the subject of how the brakes are applied, and sometimes with a little force, on landings. It isn't what some airline cynics assume, that the pilots want to get off the runway fast so they can get home faster and grab a cold brewsky.

I like this line: "Say what you want about airlines and the indignities of flying, but if anybody in this business has the passengers' backs, it's the flight crew."

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Rudest Cities to Visit?

A Web site and mobile platform that analyzes travel, Foursquare, is getting copious publicity with its list of the twenty "rudest" cities in the English-speaking world.

According to Foursquare, the "rudest" citizens were those who used profanity and obscenities in on-site recommendations.

Manchester, England, as you can see, tops the list, which strikes me as very shakily compiled. Ok, the list strikes me as half-assed. Sorry, Foursquare, but you did get the publicity. Also here. (On the other hand, you also did get my attention, so there's that at least).

Anyway, I do agree that New York City does not belong on any such list. Despite stereotypes, New York is among the most courteous big cities in the word, in my opinion. Only rubes who don't know New York call it rude. (For some reason, Staten Island is on the list. Who the hell visits Staten Island?]

London, meanwhile, has always struck me as a somewhat rude city. It's not on this list.

On the other hand, Miami is on the list, and I have to ask, what's the story there? I thought the list was for English-speaking cities?

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Oh Come On, Boxcutters?

The easily excited New York Post newspaper has a breathless account today, flogged online by Drudge, about an innocent passenger who "managed to waltz past JFK's ramped-up security gantlet with three boxcutters in his carry-on luggage" and got on an international flight.

Oh, settle down, people. The guy probably didn't waltz. My guess is he was actually doing the dread TSA checkpoint two-step.

OK, boxcutters are among the dozens of things that cannot be carried on an airplane. It's a good idea to try to keep people from carrying them onto a crowded airplane. Evidently, boxcutters were the weapon of choice on 9/11, when terrorists overpowered flight crews and commandeered airplanes to use them as guided missiles.

Remember, catapults in warfare changed the course of history. But you probably don't need to worry too much about a catapult these days, unless that crazy neighbor you're having a dispute with over his barking dog is constructing one in his back yard.

As regards boxcutters, here's a fact: No one will ever again take over an airplane using a freaking boxcutter. I almost pity any poor misguided moron who tries it, given the vigilance of crews and passengers, and the way they'll throttle anyone who brandishes a gun or a knife, let alone something as ridiculous as a boxcutter, capable of, what? Causing grievous lacerations before the assailant is almost instantly pummeled to death by flight attendants and passengers?

Back on 9/11, before anyone ever thought terrorists would take over a plane and use it as a guided missile, a hijacking attempt was looked at far differently. Some clowns with boxcutters had a whole lot more leeway back then. Back before cockpit doors were fortified, for instance.

Here's the problem: Every time somebody in the media, abetted by some politician looking for publicity, gets into an overheated frisson over a small security breach like this, it sets back serious attempts, by the TSA and others, to sensibly address threats, including threats posed by liquid explosives. It causes a defensive reaction at the checkpoints to spend more time and effort overtly pawing through bags for things, as a part of the security theater that overblown stories like this keep in production.

And instead of more progress in security risk-management (which the TSA understands), we get more hysteria about "things" rather than threats.

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2 GIs Killed in Apparent Terrorist Attack at Frankfurt Airport

Two American GIs were shot to death at the Frankfurt airport today in what appears to have been an attack by Kosovo-linked terrorists. Two others were injured in the attack.

It's terrorism, I venture, because the assailant and/or assailants yelled "Allahu Akbar" ("God is Great"), which is absolutely the last thing any traveler wants to hear shouted in an airport or on a plane.

Here's a news report, which identifies the victims as "airmen," which I presume means U.S. Air Force personnel, but who can tell given the sloppiness of wire-service reporting these days.

[Update: Here's an update from CNN. The GIs apparently were stationed at Lakenheath Air Force Base, the largest U.S. Air Force base in England.]

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Latest Fashion Fad from Libya

Stuck in Tripoli, Libya, and unable to flee because Gaddafi's maundering mercenaries have shut the airport and are shooting down people in the streets, and the Mediterranean is just too dang rough this time of the year to escape by boat, even to make it to Malta?

While you're waiting, buy a Gaddafi loony-tyrant fur-flap hat!

Not stuck in Tripoli? Not to worry, the loony-tyrant fur-flap hat is available at all the finest Korean War Army-Navy stores (tin-foil lining extra)!

The loony-tyrant fur-flap ushkana-chic hat fad comes just a little bit too late to make it on the runways at Fashion Week in New York.

Next year!

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Air Travel Booming in Asia

China plans to build at least 45 new airports in the next five years as air gtravel booms throughout Asia and India. Here's the AP story via Flightaware.com

The cost for the new Chinese airports: $230 billion.

One interesting aspect of new airport-building in Asia is that when you build an airport from scratch, you get to work in all of the modern design and engineering innovations that existing airports, like those in the U.S. and Europe, struggle to accommodate.

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Separated at Birth?

Little Richard and Qaddafi?

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A Note For E-Mail Messages

To those who have been e-mailing me using the address linked to in my profile: Sorry! I plumb forgot about that e-mail and haven't checked it in months.

Now am linking to it on my desktop so I'll remember to check it.

It's sharkey_joe@yahoo.com

Now I remember.

Joe Sharkey

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Hawaii Bill Would Punish Travel Writers for Tourists Who Trespass

Today's Prayer:

"Dear Lord, please spare us from the folly of legislators."


This time, the focus is on the state house in Hawaii. (Whew, they're saying at the statehouse in Phoenix, where there is always a full menu of crazy on tap. And hold on, Texas legislature, we know you're still in the loon-race).

There's legislation making its way through the Hawaii state legislature that will hold travel writers and publishers of things like print and online travel guides, including Web sites, liable for damages suffered by readers who might trespass on private land while visiting the state.

Here's a copy of the House version of the legislation.

The Association of American Publishers (AAP) is strongly protesting this nutty proposed legislation. A committee of the Hawaii House of Representatives has already given unanimous approval to the measure.

In a letter to the Hawaii Senate Economic Development and Technology Committee, the publishers association called the legislation "ill-conceived." Pointing out that such a statute would inevitably be struck down on First Amendment grounds, the association urged the legislature to find alternative ways to address whatever it is the state house worthies think needs addressing ... oh, "trespassing."

The association's freedom to read director, Judy Platt, said: "The approach taken by this legislation would have a profound and unacceptable chilling effect not only on AAP members who publish travel guides, but on the robust free marketplace of ideas that the First Amendment is intended to protect. The courts have simply not allowed this to happen, and the Hawaii legislature needs to be reminded of that."

Rep. Jimmy Tokioka, D-Lihu‘e-Koloa, a sponsor of the House bill, said the law would target writers and publications that encourage people to go to dangerous places such as Kipu Falls, in Puhi, knowing that to get there the readers will have to walk through private property, according to this account in The GardenIsland of Kaua'i.

The publication quoted Sen. Ron Kouchi, D-Kaua‘i, saying that some travel publications encourage tourists to break the trespassing laws. "Some of the guide books say that all of the locals disregard the no-trespassing signs," said Kouchi, who co-introduced the Senate bill.

The bill is moving along. It's a great overreach, an insult to the First Amendment.

How much of an overreach? Well, take these examples from the bill's text (italics are mine): "The legislature finds that visitor Web sites and visitor guide publications may invite potential visitors to trespass ..." ... "The representations made by these visitor Web sites and visitor guide publications may put potential visitors at risk by describing attractions or activities that are located on remote private properties or that are only accessible through remote private property, without adequately describing the inherent dangers associated with these attractions and activities. ..."

Imagine what a First Amendment lawyer could do to that language in a legal challenge. Wait, that language wouldn't even stand up in traffic court.

The Association of American Publishers is the national trade association of the U.S. book publishing industry. AAP’s approximately 280 members include most of the major commercial book publishers in the United States, as well as smaller and non-profit publishers, university presses and scholarly societies.

Hawaii, by the way, has been struggling with a sharp decline in tourism, a decline that has only recently apparently bottomed out. As Arizona has found out, stupid and unconstitutional laws create an image problem and discourage tourism and meetings business, which Hawaii can scarcely afford to do.

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More Wierdness From Wasilla As Palin Biographies Loom

[UPDATED WITH PUB DATE ON MCGINNISS BOOK]


[UPDATED 2-24]

Joe McGinniss wrote a terrific book about Alaska, "Going to Extremes," which was published in 1980 and is still an excellent travel memoir, full of wonderfully observed insights.
More recently, McGinniss returned to Alaska, renting a house next door to the Palin family lakefront residence in Wasilla for a few months last year while he was doing research on his biography of Sarah Palin, which will be published sometime this year by Broadway Books. (The publication date hasn't been announced yet).

Palin famously yowled in protest about McGinniss's proximity to the homestead, implying that he was a peeping tom. McGinniss's proximity to the people in Wasilla who are familiar with Palin's dirty laundry was, of course, more to the point. Obviously, the much-anticipated McGinniss biography won't be favorable toward the former part-term Alaska governor and 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate.

But while we await McGinniss's book, here comes a new wave of weirdness from Wasilla, with reports that one Frank Bailey, a former top aide to Palin, has written a 500-page biography/expose of her that, interestingly, does not yet have an actual publisher. This would-be book, with the unwieldy working title "Blind Allegiance to Sarah Palin: A Memoir Of Our Tumultuous Years," has also acquired two co-authors (read: rewrite doctors) in its long quest to find a publisher. Bailey, incidentally, describes himself as a "Fox News conservative," whatever that is supposed to convey.

But now, suddenly, the mystery manuscript has been leaked and is getting publicity. The authors and the literary agent shopping the manuscript to publishers profess to be shocked and horrified at the disclosure. The Anchorage Daily News has the most detailed account of this latest set of Alaska shenanigans, as currently understood, that is.

Two things:

1. I haven't seen the leaked manuscript, but the excerpts and bullet points that have been noted by the Alaska newspaper and other media that have the manuscript seem to suggest why publishers have not jumped to sign up this book. Basically, the excerpts rehash some Alaska campaign violation charges and that long-ago-digested scandal over the firing of a state trooper who had run afoul of the Palin clan. And, oh yeah, it seems that Sarah Palin can become very, very cross when she feels she has been slighted or denied a benefit.

[UPDATE, 2-24]: On the other hand, the Anchorage Daily News seems to have done a lousy job of excerpting the manuscript it had in its hands. Subsequent reports on the manuscript are a little juicier and could in fact persuade a publisher to go with it.

2. The Anchorage Daily News strangely discloses that one copy of several copies of the manuscript it obtained had been sent to it by none other than McGinniss himself. The newspaper says, "The Daily News received copies from multiple sources, the first from author Joe McGinniss, who is working on his own Palin book. McGinniss didn't respond to a message asking where he obtained the manuscript and the reason he circulated it."

(Nor has the Anchorage Daily News addressed under which specific conditions it obtained the various leaked copies, whether the newspaper has violated any conditions in identifying McGinniss as a source, or whether it might feel a journalistic imperative to publicly disclose who else leaked the goods to the paper -- but that's another matter entirely.)

What to make of all this? Well, as usual, those who are suspicious must ask cui bono? To whose benefit does this accrue?

I have admired Joe McGinniss since he was a merrily provocative city columnist on the old Annenberg-owned Philadelphia Inquirer, driving poor Walter Annenberg nuts while Walter was trying to stifle dissent, punish enemies, sell his discredited newspaper, and get himself taken seriously as the new Nixon-appointed ambassador to Britain. Happily, Annenberg did sell the Inquirer to quality new owners in 1970, a few years after McGinniss left to write his first book, "The Selling of the President 1968."

By the way, I also have had some very minor personal experience as an author of a timely and carefully researched non-fiction book who has suddenly become aware that a cheap, quickie competitive book is likely to be on the market first. This has in fact happened to me twice, and in both cases my books' prospects were seriously damaged by the sudden appearance of quickie clip-jobs on the same newsy topic that hit the market a few months before mine did.

As regards the marketing of the McGinniss book, it also has to be a consideration by author and/or editor and/or publisher alike that Sarah Palin's popularity is on the wane, that a once potentially formidable candidate for the Republican nomination for president in 2012 has been fast losing steam, while derision directed toward her grows even in conservative ranks.

Incidentally, there's no mystery to me about how the Bailey manuscript got out. When a manuscript on a timely, probably marketable topic is shopped around, agent to publisher to publisher, copies are made and dispersed by insiders with varying motives.

My guess here is we have colliding dynamics. An inferior, limp Palin book is being shopped (and hyped, through clever media-stunt placement), to obtain a publisher and then get the book into play fast, even as interest in Palin may be waning. Coming the other way is McGinniss' superior, serious Palin book, with no publication date yet announced -- a book whose marketability is potentially affected by a competitor in a specific time frame. And waiting round the corner, maybe, is the wreck of the Palin phenomenon itself.

Among many questions: Does the leaked manuscript of a junk Palin bio also have the effect of jump-starting publication and/or marketing of the quality McGinniss bio sooner this year, rather than later?

[UPDATE: The McGinniss book now has a publication date: It's being rushed out for September.]

Meanwhile, here's a post on the leak situation by one of the putative co-authors of the Bailey book, Jeanne Devon, who writes The Mudflats, an Alaska-based blog that is often critical of Palin. And here's a post describing himself by the other putative co-author, Ken Morris.

So many possible agendas, you could write a mystery novel.

###

Separated At Birth?

...Or did Eddie Munster grow up to actually run for Congress under the name Paul Ryan?

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At the Vietnam Memorial

Forty-three years ago this month, I arrived in Saigon to start a one-year tour of duty in what would turn out to be the bloodiest year of the Vietnam War.

Not long ago a young woman in the travel industry was telling me with great enthusiasm how much she had enjoyed a recent trip to Vietnam, where cities like Saigon have new names and new amenities like five-star hotels.

"Have you ever been to Vietnam?" she asked me.

"Yes," I said.

"Have you been to Hue?" she asked.

"Yes," I told her.

"What did you think?" she said brightly.

"Well, it was still on fire at the time."

Her uncomprehending expression told me that Vietnam was a very, very long time ago.
I was in Washington D.C. last week and visited the beautiful Vietnam memorial for the first time.

The young men in the picture above were asking the volunteer at the memorial to rub a name onto a paper -- as a favor, one said, for a grandfather, whose best friend it was.

A very long time ago.

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Egypt: Heroics Hide Problems for Women Travelers

Within all media euphoria about the heroic triumph of freedom (or at least the deposing of a despot) in Egypt lies the awful story of Lara Logan, American reporter, who was savagely sexually assaulted by a joyous mob of Egyptian men celebrating their victory over the rule of Hosni Mubarak. Ms. Logan's sins, evidently, were being blond and beautiful, and being in public in a place like that.

Spare me the stirring freedom narrative for a moment. It's time to look harder at the hideous sexual culture of a part of the world where the local women are considered property, and foreign women on the street by themselves are deemed fair game for assault, from verbal harassment to casual groping to worse, by the local male populace.

The fact is, I do not know any woman who feels comfortable traveling alone anywhere in the Islamic Middle East, including those who have to do so for business reasons. This is something you hear all the time about Egypt in particular from female travelers, incidentally, but it's also true throughout the region.

Maybe in their triumph, the celebrants in Egypt can make a new revolution. One that teaches their pious sons, and their sanctimonious mullahs, fundamental respect for the rights and dignity of women, including the fundamental right to be in public and not to be assaulted.

Till then, spare me the heroics. Spare me the piety, Egypt, till your sons and brothers and husbands and fathers learn how to behave in a civilized manner with women. Friday prayers would be a good place to start this discussion.

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N . Texas Weather a Super Bowl Party-Pooper, But the Private Jets Are Still Arriving En Masse

The snowy, icy weather this week in North Texas has put a damper on some of the usual high-end Super Bowl parties and other expensive festivities. [Still, the local media always manage to look giddy when the Super Bowl is in their territory, come rain or snow or sleet.]

Meanwhile, some airlines still have travel alerts in effect for Dallas/Fort Worth as well as Houston and elsewhere.

But man, the private jets are arriving, sortie after sortie into North Texas. Super Bowl weekend is always one of the big events for private-jet parties. In recent years, many companies with their own jets have either managed to conceal their flights, thanks to a deal that the business-jet industry cooked up with the FAA under the guise of security. Or, as is often the case, companies have sold the plane(s) and depend instead on much-less-public charter leasing.

Big sports weekends like this also attract a lot of private social parties, including packages arranged by tour operators who supply private jet transportation, luxury hotel accommodations and invitations to glitzy parties.

There are about 15 general aviation airports in the Dallas area, and the private jets are using them all. Also, many are using Love Field, the secondary airport in Dallas.

Hey, if you've got the dough and you're not stiffing shareholders or taxpayers, why not spend it and let roll whatever good times it might buy, is my attitude.

Incidentally, in a cursory check of the private-flight tracking service on FlightAware.com, I see an unusual number of private jet flights taking off today from the University of Oklahoma Airport. What's up with that?

###

Out of Gas in Arizona

For the past two nights the overnight temperatures in Tucson have been at record-breaking lows -- last night was as cold as it's been since the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral days, 15 degrees.

Water pipes burst all over town, but even worse, the gas-pipeline distribution system in south Texas, New Mexico and southern Arizona has been unable to keep up with a surge in demand since Wednesday. Whole sections of Tucson have been without gas heat for days -- at a time when the annual Gem Show is in full swing and all of the hotels are full.

The Loews Ventana Canyon resort, among others, is full right now of very unhappy campers. 400 guests are huddled around without heat. Even hotel kitchens are shut down, as least for cooking.

Oddly, the national media have entirely missed this interesting story. Well, not so oddly, actually.

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Super Bowl Travel Delays Mount As Snow and Ice Cause More Flight Cancellations in Texas

A big mess is underway for Super Bowl travelers to Dallas as large numbers of flights are being canceled once again today and tomorrow.

And the statistics below don't even take into account the hundreds of private-jet flights that will be affected, Super Bowl being one of the biggest annual events for high-flying private jet parties.

This today on commercial airline flights, from FlightAware.com:

"The fallout from the storm is continuing to cause more cancellations in Texas, which is really unfortunate timing considering the Super Bowl is in Dallas on Sunday. 885 flights have been cancelled to/from Houston today and 543 to/from Dallas. Total cancellations so far today are 1,726.

Houston IAH is the primary hub for Continental Airlines. Dallas DFW is the primary hub for American Airlines. Southwest Airlines has hubs at both Dallas Love (DAL) and Houston Hobby (HOU). Temperatures are forecast to get above freezing in Houston in the next few hours, which will allow the roads, ramps, and planes to thaw out so that normal operations can resume this afternoon. However, Dallas is forecast to stay below freezing until tomorrow afternoon.

FlightAware is estimating the total number of affected passengers to be between 700K and 800K.

Yesterday's total is 2,594 and the total for this week is 19,906 -- just shy of 20K.

Real-time cancellation stats: http://flightaware.com/live/cancelled

We expect the traffic levels in Chicago to decline as heavy snow falls for the rest of the evening, and East Coast from D.C. to Boston to seize up due to freezing rain and ice overnight.

Even flights in areas that are largely unaffected are seeing extensive delays due to routings around weather."

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TSA OK's Some Union Bargaining for Screeners, But With Very Big Restrictions

The TSA will allow a labor union to engage in collective bargaining for its workforce of about 50,000 screeners and other security officers, but things like pay, pensions, job qualifications and employee disciplinary actions won't be on the table. And they won't be allowed to strike, engage in work-slowdown protests or take other collective job actions.

Those are mighty big "buts" for any union to swallow. TSA screeners have long pressed for collective bargaining rights, and two separate unions are vying for the right to represent them, with votes coming up in March. Currently, the TSA said, more than 13,000 screeners are paying dues to either one of the two unions that are seeking to represent them in collective bargaining.

In setting narrow limits, the TSA would allow national (not local) collective bargaining on some matters such as priority on work schedules and vacation time, and various procedural matters. The unions have not yet weighed in on their responses to this kind of deal.

No matter how the unions play it, the move will intensify a looming battle with anti-union Republicans in Congress, such as John Mica, the chairman of the House Transportation Committee, who earlier today lobbed a warning shot at the TSA over this issue. (See previous post)

The TSA head, John Pistole, said today that the agency will provide "a framework to protect TSA’s ability to respond to evolving threats, while allowing Transportation Security Officers (TSOs) to vote on whether or not they wish to be represented by a union for the purposes of engaging in limited, clearly defined collective bargaining at the national level only on non-security employment issues. If a union is chosen, each security officer will retain the right to choose whether or not to join the union."

Pistole said: "The safety of the traveling public is our top priority and we will not negotiate on security. But morale and employee engagement cannot be separated from achieving superior security. If security officers vote to move forward with collective bargaining, this framework will ensure that TSA retains the capability and flexibility necessary to respond to evolving threats, and continue improving employee engagement, performance and professional development."

The framework allows for bargaining at the national level only -– while prohibiting local-level bargaining at individual airports –- on certain employment issues such as shift bids, transfers and awards. Pistole’s order, which is officially called a "determination," prohibits bargaining on any topics that might affect security, such as:

--Security policies, procedures or the deployment of security personnel or equipment
--Pay, pensions and any form of compensation
--Proficiency testing
--Job qualifications-
--Discipline standards

Additionally, the TSA move strictly prohibits officers from striking or engaging in work slowdowns of any kind.

Last November, the Federal Labor Relations Authority issued a decision that called for an election among TSOs to determine whether a majority of officers wished to have exclusive union representation for purposes other than collective bargaining.

The TSA statement said:

Pistole’s determination allows this election to move forward, consistent with TSA's security mission and conducted under his Determination’s carefully defined framework.
Under the legislation that created TSA, Congress expressly granted the TSA administrator sole authority to establish the terms and conditions of employment for security officers at airports.

Pistole pledged during his confirmation hearings that he would complete a thorough assessment of the impact collective bargaining might have on the safety and security of the traveling public. The recently completed assessment included a review of employee data, a broad range of conversations, input from employees, TSA management and from the two union presidents, as well as interviews with the present and former leaders of a variety of security and law enforcement agencies and organizations. These included federal, state, and local government agencies such as the NYPD and Customs and Border Protection and employers of unionized guards at a number of national security facilities such as secure nuclear weapon and Department of Defense facilities, as well as experts on labor relations in high performance organizations. Interviews were also conducted with management at two airports that are part of TSA’s Screening Partnership Program that have unionized contracted screeners.

During TSA’s formative years, collective bargaining was prohibited, although membership in a union was not.

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'Collective Bargaining' Ahead for TSA Screeners?

...well, not if Rep. John L. Mica (R-FL), the chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee has anything to say about it. Which, of course, he does.

Mica's office sends out this statement today, "regarding an expected announcement from the Administration and the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) on collective bargaining for TSA airport security screeners."

It follows a move last week by the TSA head, John Pistole, to halt any further expansion of a program, popular with anti-union politicians, that allowed airports to not use TSA screeners and instead hire private security-firm screeners who work under TSA rules. Only about 16 airports have opted for that program, which was put in place by anti-union politicians at the start of the TSA in 2003. Critics of the program say that it allows airports and local airport authorities to reward their own cronies in the rent-a-cop security industry with lucrative contracts -- a throwback to the way airport security worked before the TSA was started.

Mica says: "This turnover of airport screening to the Administration’s union cronies comes on the heels of last week’s decision to kill the successful TSA contract screening program, all bad news for the traveler, the taxpayer and aviation security. With the airport screening force mushrooming from 16,500 in 2001 to now nearly 63,000, this will be President Obama’s biggest gift to organized labor."

TSA screeners currently have the right to unionize, but not the ability to collectively bargain. Mica says, "Conceding collective-bargaining rights and the ability to negotiate over workplace issues could further jeopardize the nation’s transportation and passenger security system," Mica asserts, without addressing how that might be.

Mica invokes a statement made in 2003 by the former Coast Guard admiral James Loy, whose tenure as head of the TSA is widely regarded as having been feckless. "In 2003, TSA Administrator Admiral James Loy appropriately stated, 'Mandatory collective bargaining is not compatible with the flexibility required to wage the war against terrorism. Fighting terrorism demands a flexible workforce that can rapidly respond to threats. That can mean changes in work assignments and other conditions of employment that are not compatible with the duty to bargain with labor unions.'"

[Loy is currently on the board of a company, L-1 Identity Solutions, that sells biometric and other technology-based security-identification systems to airports and other enterprises.]

Mica: "Last week, TSA also announced it would halt expansion of the Screening Partnership Program (SPP). This screening program, established by Congress in the original TSA law, allows airports to opt to use certified private security screeners under TSA supervision and oversight. In previous reviews, this private-federal security model has performed as well as or better than the all-federal model. Chairman Mica has launched an investigation and review of this TSA policy decision to contradict the spirit and intent of the law."

###

Reporters, Foreign Observers Under Attack in Cairo

Attacks against foreigners in Cairo are widening. Many are trying to flee the country. This is not an easy thing to do right now, with the airport in chaos.

The very important free-press group Committee to Protect Journalists has a heads-up summary on the new tactic by pro-government forces in Cairo to single out journalists for attack. Here's the current report. The major news media like the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, MSNBC, CNN, etc. are also on top of this, as is Al Jazeera, which has firmly reinforced its reputation as a very solid international news organization in this crisis. Fox News, meanwhile, shows that it is reckless and wildly inaccurate even in a story it hasn't yet figured out a way to fully spin into a condemnation of the Democrats or proof that global warming is a hoax. For hours yesterday, Fox was reporting, ridiculously, that there were widespread "lynchings" in Cairo yesterday.

ABC News, which is not always reliable (for example, they love rushing out, usually right before holidays, with breathless reports on impending terrorist attacks that never seem to pend) has a list of journalists who have been arrested or attacked.

By the way, except for occasional gripping video that someone managed to shoot, this is a text and blog story. Example, from Al Jazeera:

"Al Jazeera's online producer in Cairo said: 'The battle for downtown Cairo on Thursday has taken on an almost medieval quality, with protesters erecting makeshift barricades and building homemade catapults to launch rocks at each other.'"

"Medieval" -- there's a case where a word is worth a thousand pictures.

In a situation like that, openly shooting video is difficult and dangerous and words supply the context. Myself, except for the occasional video, I actually prefer text on a story like this. Unless it's live video like that amazing stuff at about 4 a.m. Cairo time between Rachel Maddow and the invaluable NBC News chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel, reporting from what had to be a dangerous spot on a hotel balcony right above the boundary of Tahrir Square. This was married, alas, when the NBC anchor Brian Williams muscled in on the balcony and began prattling on about stuff like the "barrage" of gunfire -- when in fact Engel had just accurately described it as "scattered small-arms fire." Engel also knew enough to distinguish between handgun fire and automatic rifle fire, which is a whole different kettle of fish in a riot. The MSNBC control room in New York also screwed up the amazing live video by plastering that annoying and ever-present and way too big "Breaking News" display across the bottom of the screen, where it covered up about 20 percent of the amazing live images. Why do they do that?]

Anyway, the usual suspects in the mighty journalism harrumph-brigade, including the Poynter Institute (the Dong Dong School of journalism academe), and the once-useful and now irrelevant Columbia Journalism Review, seem to be ineffective, per usual, when things get hot and current.

###

Update on Today's Airport Messes; Continental Shuttering IAH

Here's a live update on today's flight cancellations from Flightaware.com

FlightAware, by the way, seems to be edging out FlightStats.com as the basic news-media go-to site for flight delays and cancellations information, probably because its text summary of the day's flight operations makes it easy for reporters to review. On the other hand, I'm seeing a much more detailed account of flight cancellations at my own favorite source, Flightstats.com. For example, Flightstats reports the cancellations at 1,113 today at Chicago O'Hare; Flightaware seems to be lagging on the O'Hare data. And both seem to be sucking wind, as they say, on the most current information at Houston, where Continental has basically pulled the plug on operations starting late this afternoon.

Anyway, I am glad to see that I have finally shamed lazy reporters to at least make an attempt to get the numbers straight, and stop relying on those decades-old Rolodex contacts for the PR guy at the local airport who doesn't know a delay from a delicatessen. (Or worse, using the the FAA, whose supposedly live "flight delays" online map is simply a fiction).

Meanwhile, Continental Airlines intends to basically shut down its major hub at the amusingly named Houston George Bush Intercontinental Airport, better known among pilots as Houston Intergalactic. SO if you're flying today to Housoton, or with a a connection through Houston, be very aware.

Here is Continental's announcement this morning:

"As of 9:04 a.m. Central, Thu., Feb. 3, 2011 -- DUE TO WINTRY CONDITIONS IN THE SOUTH - CONTINENTAL AIRLINES WILL SUSPEND MOST OF ITS OPERATIONS TO/FROM HOUSTON INTERCONTINENTAL TODAY FEBRUARY 3RD STARTING AT 1800CST UNTIL FEBRUARY 4TH AT 1200CST. MANY FLIGHTS HAVE ALREADY BEEN CANCELED."


I watch this winter mess from warm and sunny Tuscon. Oh, wait a minute, it's sunny here but it sure ain't warm this morning. In fact, the last time southern Arizona had overnight temperatures as low as last night's (18 degrees in Tucson), Wyatt Earp was still a sheriff. But it's going to be in the 60s by noon, at least. And the usual warm weather will return this weekend. So yes, I will shut the heck up.

###

Airlines Hike Fares, Weigh Reviving Fuel Surcharges

Airlines are busily hiking fares again, even as they have canceled well over 13,000 flights during the awful snow and ice storms of the last few days.

Rick Seaney, the CEO of FareCompare.com reports "significant fare and fuel-surcharge hike activity from several domestic U.S. airlines."

He adds, "Coinciding with Brent crude prices hitting a two-year high of $100/barrel, late [Monday] evening, American Airlines initiated an airfare hike between $4 and $10 roundtrip on the bulk of their domestic route system, while in the same filing United/Continental cautiously added a $6 roundtrip fuel surcharge on a significant number of routes, being careful to tiptoe around low cost airlines and the cheapest of sale fares.

"This is the third airfare hike attempt this year (two in December 2010). The four previous domestic hikes the past two months all met with varying degrees of success."

[UPDATE: Seaney says this afternoon: "In a flurry of activity the past 18 hours several airlines have matched the American-initiated domestic airfare hike of $4 to $10 roundtrip -- including Continental, Delta, United, US Airways, JetBlue, Alaska, AirTran, Air Canada and WestJet leaving only Southwest and Frontier sitting on the sidelines. United/Continental as part of their matching of the American hike dropped the $6rt fuel surcharge in what appears to be related to domestic airlines motto of "never be $1 more or less than your competitor unless you have a scheduling advantage" fostered by consumers behavior to comparison shop."]

"Outside of peak travel 'miscellaneous' surcharges (charges for specific high volume travel periods), we haven’t seen domestic fuel surcharges since November 2008 when U.S. airlines dropped them from domestic airfares as fuel prices plummeted from summer highs of $140+/barrel that year.

"Additionally, JetBlue added a fuel surcharge to Puerto Rico and the Caribbean between $70 and $90 roundtrip, while American also increased prices to Canada by $22 roundtrip (matched by Air Canada) and Hawaii by $21 roundtrip.

"During the day [Tuesday], both US Airways and Alaska Airlines (on Canadian routes) began matching American's hike with Delta matching a smattering of the fuel surcharge increases. Staying out of the fray for the moment are Southwest, AirTran and Frontier."

Separately, a report today from the Transportation Department's Bureau of Transportation Statistics says that average domestic air fares rose to $340 in the third quarter of 2010, up 10.7 percent from the average fare of $307 in the third quarter of 2009.

The hilariously named Newark Liberty International Airport had the highest average fare, $469, while Atlantic City, N.J., had the lowest, $153, according to the BTS report.

Third-quarter fares decreased 0.3 percent from the second quarter, after four consecutive quarterly increases. During those four quarters ending in the second quarter of 2010, fares increased 12.9 percent after falling to a recent low of $302 in the second quarter of 2009.

###

'sno Joke: Horrible, Terrible Snow and Hideous Ice

OK, the main thing you need to know right now is that horrible icy weather has canceled nearly 1,200 departures and arrivals flights as of early afternoon in ... Dallas-Fort Worth. The airport was closed for hours this morning and is only now getting some flight operations back.

It's also hideous as you look north and east. Chicago O'Hare had 1,023 canceled flights as of mid-morning. Even where the weather hasn't yet deteriorated severely yet, airlines are preemptively scrubbing flights. The hilariously named Newark Liberty International Airport has 678 cancellations so far; Kennedy has 445; La Guardia has 611. The numbers come as usual from FlightStats.com, and I have only begun to count.

A truly miserable, hideous, dangerous, awful snow-and-ice storm hit a significant portion of the United States today. (Hey, this climate change stuff is a liberal-Nazi-socialist-Trilateral Commission-lamestream-media-Commie hoax, right?).

The worst air-travel week of the year is upon us.

By the way: If, like me, you live in a nice sunny place where the only snow you ever see is high, high on a mountaintop where in my opinion it belongs -- here is some friendly advice. Do not, repeat not, kid around with anyone in the snowbound regions, whether Chicago, New York, Boston or elsewhere, about their miserable, cold, snow-plagued winter.

I did that, very lightly, yesterday with a usually cheerful, optimistic young woman from New York who I was speaking with on the phone about a column I was writing. I made a little joke about snow.

"How's the weather in Tucson?" she asked me glumly.

"Beautiful, sunny and warm as usual," I said.

She considered this and then said darkly, "Yeah, but you could get shot in the f---ing head there, of course."

Whoa, first time I ever heard her curse.

###

More Snow and Ice Loom. And No, This Is Not a Drill

Oh come on now, you can't be serious, Weather Channel. Another big snow storm?

This has to be hype, Weather Channel. You cannot seriously be using words like "destructive" and "severe" and "historic," in forecasting a massive winter storm this week predicted to stretch form the Rockies to the New England coast. Weather Channel. Surely, this has to be a ratings ploy. Or the Onion News Network has accidentally jumped a channel.

Uh, oh. Evidently they are serious. Stand by for heavy rolls, as they say in the Navy.

I gave up counting the number of flight cancellations this month at about 40,000.

###

Americans Advised to Leave Cairo; Security Forces Shut Down Al Jazeera Bureau

The U.S. State Department says it's planning to offer airlift service tomorrow for the estimated 75,000 Americans now living and working in Egypt, most of them in Cairo.

The State Department statement said, "The U.S. embassy in Cairo informs U.S. citizens in Egypt who wish to depart that the Department of State is making arrangements to provide transportation to safe haven locations in Europe. Flights to evacuation points will begin departing Egypt on Monday, Jan. 31."

However, the State Department did not provide any specifics on how this extraordinary involuntary evacuation would be arranged -- in a city under siege, with foreigners stuck in their hotels or homes without reliable access to cell-phone or Internet service. So we shall see tomorrow how that goes. (See photo above, Saigon being evacuated in 1975.)

So the unanswered question is, how you gonna do this? Chris Wallace, who interviewed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Fox News this morning, didn't ask the very obvious follow-up question ("How, exactly?") when she said this (italics mine):

"Well, we are following the conditions for American citizens extremely closely. This is one of my highest responsibilities, Chris. And we have authorized voluntary departure, which means that we will assist American citizens to leave Egypt. We have warned that there should not be any nonessential travel to Egypt. Thankfully, right now, there are no reports of Americans killed or injured. Again, I thank the Egyptian army for the support and security that they have provided. But we are watching it closely and we are assisting Americans who wish to leave."

The State Department, which was slow on the uptake to issue a travel alert for Egypt, has now issued a higher-level travel warning, which has the usual boilerplate blather, while advising Americans to avoid travel to Egypt.

As to travel from Egypt, eh, stand by for instructions ... ... (There are reports today that the police and the hated uniformed security forces will return to the streets tomorrow, after having abandoned them for the weekend. This would only add to the chaos.)

At Cairo International Airport, commercial flights are severely limited. Delta, the only U.S. airline with direct service between the U.S. and Cairo, has suspended its Cairo flights indefinitely.

But Delta is of little value for anyone needing usable information while under actual siege. Its Web site and Twitter feeds say, with that no-shit-Sherlock casualness (italics mine): "Advisory: Civil Unrest in Cairo... Civil unrest may impact travel to, from, or through Cairo, Egypt. Check flight status frequently for up-to-the-minute info about your flight plans, or get updates sent directly to your wireless device or email with Delta Messenger."

[UPDATE: The UK Foreign Office is advising British citizens to leave Cairo, Alexandria and Suez if they deem that it is safe to do so. But the UK warning also sensibly notes that Cairo International Airport, besieged by people trying to find flights out and understaffed because many Egyptian workers can't get to their jobs there, is not operating in an "orderly" manner.]

Meanwhile, what's left of the Egyptian government has desperately moved against Al Jazeera, the well-respected Qatar-based Arab news service that has been all over this story, including with live blog updates. Security forces entered the Al Jazeera offices in the capital and shut it down, but the news service continues struggle to operate throughout Cairo and the rest of Egypt.

From the Al Jazeera English-language live blog earlier today:

"The Al Jazeera Network strongly denounces and condemns the closure of its bureau in Cairo by the Egyptian government. The Network received notification from the Egyptian authorities this morning.

Al Jazeera has received widespread global acclaim for their coverage on the ground across the length and breadth of Egypt.

An Al Jazeera spokesman said that they would continue their strong coverage regardless:

'Al Jazeera sees this as an act designed to stifle and repress the freedom of reporting by the network and its journalists. In this time of deep turmoil and unrest in Egyptian society it is imperative that voices from all sides be heard; the closing of our bureau by the Egyptian government is aimed at censoring and silencing the voices of the Egyptian people.

'Al Jazeera assures its audiences in Egypt and across the world that it will continue its in-depth and comprehensive reporting on the events unfolding in Egypt. Al Jazeera journalists have brought unparalleled reporting from the ground from across Egypt in the face of great danger and extraordinary circumstances. Al Jazeera Network is appalled at this latest attack by the Egyptian regime to strike at its freedom to report independently on the unprecedented events in Egypt.'"


[UPDATE: Media blogger Jeff Jarvis at Buzzmachine.com writes that U.S. cable companies should begin carrying Al Jazeera English:

"What the Gulf War was to CNN, the people’s revolutions of the Middle East are to Al Jazeera English. But in the U.S., in a sad vestige of the era of Freedom Fries, hardly anyone can watch the channel on cable TV. ...

"It is downright un-American to still refuse to carry it. Vital, world-changing news is occurring in the Middle East and no one -- not the xenophobic or celebrity-obsessed or cut-to-the-bone American media -- can bring the perspective, insight, and on-the-scene reporting Al Jazeera English can."

Jarvis added, "Yes, we can watch AJE on the internet. But as much of an internet triumphalist as I am, internet-streaming is not going to have the same impact -- political and education impact -- that putting AJE on the cable dial would have. I can watch AJE in the Zurich hotel room where I am now; I want to be able to watch it on my couch at home."]

###

Looting in Cairo?

There are only sketchy reports of looting in Cairo, including some saying that street protesters have formed a guard outside the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities, home of the world's greatest collection of Egyptian antiquities, including most of the artifacts found in the King Tut tomb. The museum is also known as the National Museum and the Cairo Museum.

According to this report by Agence France-Presse, a "human chain" has been set up at the museum to protect it during the growing street unrest. According to AFP, watch groups to protect museums and other sites have been set up by the Muslim Brotherhood ...(uh-oh).

[UPDATE: There was in fact some looting and/or serious vandalism at the museum earlier in the day.]

Homes in some neighborhoods are also being threatened by what some people on the streets say are thugs who appear to be out-of-uniform members of the security police.

But surely such a place as the Cairo museum, which is at Tahrir Square, the site of the major protest gatherings this week, cannot be in any real peril from looters. The police and hated security forces have basically skedaddled from Cairo (along, reportedly, with two of Mubarak's sons, including heir-apparent Gamal, who were reported to have fled to London, though the Egyptian government is denying this). But given the strength and professionalism of the Egyptian army, and the general goodwill the Egyptian people have toward that army (so far), it appears very unlikely that looters could do in Egypt what they did to the antiquities in Baghdad.

The official Cairo museum Web site is off-line as Internet service in the capital remains severely hampered. Here's one from the UK that has the background on the museum.

[UPDATE: From the BBC live update, just before 11 p.m. Cairo time: "Vigilante groups in the capital Cairo have set up checkpoints amid reports of widespread looting. Police have almost completely disappeared from the streets, to be replaced by young men armed with metal bars and knives. The army is guarding key locations, and shooting has been reported around government buildings as protesters continue to defy a night-time curfew. ..."]

###

TSA: No Additional Rent-a-Cop Screeners

[Left: Rep. John Mica; right: TSA chief John Pistole]


The TSA head, John Pistole, has put an end to expansion of the program that allows airports to hire private screeners, rather than use the federal employees of the TSA.

I have always regarded that privatization program as a hare-brained scheme to return to the bad old days of local airport administrators awarding security contracts to rent-a-cop companies. The private companies were still technically required to perform under TSA standards, but we know how that works with for-profit security outfits hiring the cheapest employees they can find, as cheaply as possible.

The privatization scheme -- which operates under the telling title "Screening Partnership Program (SPP) -- was always a way for anti-federal-government, anti-union senators and representatives to weaken federal control at airports and reward anti-union businesses, which often were often campaign contributors. TSA federal employees aren't unionized like most federal employees, but they do get decent pay and federally supervised training, as well as some protections under arbitration rules.

Because of pressure from those politicians, airports have been able to choose to use SPP to opt out of using federal screeners since the TSA went into being in 2003. Only a tiny number of airports chose to do so, but the move was accelerating lately.

In a memo to TSA employees, Pistole said: "To preserve TSA as an effective, federal counterterrorism security network, SPP will not be expanded beyond the current 16 airports, unless a clear and substantial advantage to do so emerges in the future."

The American Federation of Government Employees, which would like to represent the approximately 50,000 TSA screeners, welcomed that as a way to ensure "a cohesive federalized screening system and workforce."

There was immediate negative reaction from John Mica, the Florida Republican who is the new chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. Mica is not highly regarded in the aviation industry as someone with a wide breadth of knowledge about aviation, incidentally, but at work here, in my opinion, is politics, not security.

"It’s unimaginable that TSA would suspend the most successfully performing passenger screening program we’ve had over the last decade," Mica said. "The agency should concentrate on cutting some of the more than 3,700 administrative personnel in Washington who concocted this decision, and reduce the army of TSA employees that has ballooned to more than 62,000."

He added, "Nearly every positive security innovation since the beginning of TSA has come from the contractor screening program. I intend to launch a full investigation and review of the matter."

It seems to me that statement portends a showdown in a committee room between Mica and Pistole. Should be an interesting hearing.

###

Meanwhile, Back in Arizona ...

[PHOTO: Gabrielle Giffords and Trent Humphries, the Tea Party guy who says she asked for it]

TUCSON -- While everybody was hollering on the news out of Egypt today, I decided to pay a visit to a street protest by a Tea Party group in Tucson this afternoon, in which the Tea Partiers demanded that the Pima County sheriff, Clarence Dupnik, resign.

Alas, for the local TV news crews out in the sunny warmth with the crowd along Benson Highway in front of the sheriff's department, everybody was reasonable, and even the signs they toted were low-key. "Dupnik Out!" was a favorite. The most unfriendly one was merely a play on a famous movie line from The Treasure of Sierra Madre. "Dupnik? We Don't Need No Stinkin' Dupnik," it said.

There were maybe 100 Tea Partiers demonstrating to oust the sheriff. Next to them, separated only by a highway cone and a few feet of gravel, was a bigger group of maybe 150 counter-demonstrators, who held signs saying how much they admired Dupnik, who has been the sheriff of Pima County since 1980.

"We support Sheriff Dupnik--Tea Party Thugs Are Not Welcome in Tucson," said the most harsh of the lot.

Yup, I thought. All politics is local once again in Tucson, less than three weeks after that crazy gunman shot 19 people, killing six, in front of a supermarket here during an assassination attempt on Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, who was shot through the brain and is now in a Houston rehabilitation center.

I spoke with people in both groups, and nobody sounded nasty or angry. This was generally considered to be an indication that "out of towners" -- a reference both to the national media from the Tea Party side, and to Tea Partiers from outside of Arizona on the support-the-sheriff's side -- had finally gone home.

The sheriff, widely liked in Pima County, got a lot of right-wingers' red-white-and-blue-striped knickers in a twist when he said publicly right after the shootings that he saw a link between the horrible event and the very nasty, sometimes violent Tea Party and other right-wing denunciations of incumbent Democrat Gabby Giffords during the congressional campaign last Fall in the vast 9,000-square-mile 8th Congressional District, which includes Tucson as well as a good stretch of the Arizona border with Mexico.

Giffords, remember, had herself expressed serious concern about the violent speech and messages directed against her, not least of which was the infamous map of the U.S. with the gun cross-hair targets over the districts of members of Congress, Giffords among them, whom the national Tea Party's biggest loudmouths had decided to eliminate. Sarah Palin, of course, associated herself with that map.

Also during the campaign, while angry weekly Tea Party protests were held outside Giffords' district office in central Tucson, a glass door in that office was smashed at night.

Here is what Sheriff Dupnik said on the day of the shooting:

"When you look at unbalanced people, how they respond to the vitriol that comes out of certain mouths about tearing down the government, the anger, the hatred, the bigotry that goes on in this country is getting to be outrageous. And unfortunately, Arizona, I think, has become sort of the capital. We have become the mecca for prejudice and bigotry."

Now, within a day after the shooting, a great media Piety Chorale was chanting the message, as pushed by the Tea Party, that, of course there was no proof whatsoever of any possible connection between the lunatic who killed six and wounded 19 while trying to assassinate Giffords, and the violent rhetoric that had pumped relentlessly at her for a half a year by political opponents, prominently people like Palin and various elements of the various Tea Party branches.

Uh, never mind that, as it now transpires, Jared Loughner, the killer, had been researching Web sites on political assassins shortly before his rampage. Can't possibly be a link. After all, the boy's crazy!

Anyway, Sheriff Dupnik was instantly vilified by the national right-wing media for asserting that connection. Calls arose, and persist, to cast him out of office.

In a dim portend for that particular initiative, as I said, the Tea Party demonstration here today to demand his ouster drew fewer people to the sheriff's headquarters on Benson Highway today than the counter-demonstration held in support of the sheriff.

As the opposing groups stood assembled along the roadside, a guy in tan slacks and a dress shirt and tie scurried around taking to cops and to organizers. I figured by his outfit and demeanor that he was a deputy police chief or assistant to the mayor or something, but it turns out he was a star of one of the local news stations that had their satellite trucks parked nearby.

The pomaded hair should have been the give-away to me.

By 3.30, a half hour after the protests had begun, the local TV man looked a bit desperate. "I have to do the first stand-up at 5.30," he told one organizer, who nodded thoughtfully and said he'd see what he could do.

A few people driving by toted their horns politely in support of one group of signs or the other. But generally, these protesters could have just as easily been waiting for a bus.

Back during the campaign, people told me after the shootings, the truly violent and hateful signs and shouts during the regular Saturday demonstrations outside Giffords' office all seemed to come from out-of-towners -- "like people from ... Utah," as one Giffords volunteer told me darkly, putting both the ellipses and the italics into the comment by herself.

Today, the only out-of-towners I could find were from Phoenix, which hardly counts. They were a middle-aged couple who came to demand the ouster of the sheriff, not for any overt ideological reasons, but for reasons of real estate.

"What he said made Arizona look terrible," the man said. "It's affected our property values," said his wife.

Meanwhile, another woman, who had helped organize the oust-the-sheriff rally, made sure that I wrote down the name of her local Tea Party contingent correctly.

"We're the Pima County Tea Party Patriots," she said, handing me a card that said "Silent No More!" She was concerned that I not describe the rally as being organized by a rival Tea Party group, the Tucson Tea Party -- the co-founder of which, Trent Humphries, had recently got himself some swell global fame by telling a reporter in town from the Guardian newspaper of London that Gabby Giffords essentially got what she asked for.

After all, Humphries had said, the congresswoman shouldn't have attended an event "in full view of the public" if she had such serious security concerns about being shot. And just in case you think I am overstating the breathtaking inanity of his comments, here is the full story in the Guardian.

Humphries -- who graduated from college in ... Utah -- also said that the Tea Party is a victim of the shootings, just like the dead and the wounded were victims.

The Pima County Tea Party Patriots woman at the rally today looked straight at my notebook as I wrote down the correct name: "Pima County Tea Party Patriots."

Not, Tucson Tea Party. (And certainly not the Peoples Front of Judea, but that's another movie).

Anyway, I bailed out before 4 p.m., well before the evidently locally famous TV-channel guy needed to do his 5.30 stand-up.

He seemed like a nice enough man, and I hoped enough protesters would remain on the scene to give him some good sign-wagging visuals for the evening news. Far too often, I have noticed here, the intrepid local TV people are left standing at empty corners, bereft of visuals, wanly describing to a gravely nodding news anchor back at the studio that not more than an hour ago, there had been a protest rally of one sort or another on this spot.

I got in my car and headed home. On the radio, the NPR news was full of shouting and gunfire from Cairo. Then the local public-radio announcer came on, on the terrific Tucson public radio station KUAZ, which is based at the University of Arizona.

The lead story was that some excitable Republicans in the State Legislature were passing a bill that will henceforth require all presidential candidates to prove that they were born in the U.S.A. before they could be appear on any presidential ballot in this state. This work has evidently occupied them for most of the week in Phoenix.

Ah, I thought with some relief. Life is returning to normal in Arizona. The gentlemen and ladies from the Valley of the Sun are back in the saddle.

###

Traveling to Egypt, Elsewhere in Middle East? Great Caution Needed

Who knows how more vociferous these violent street protests in Egypt, Tunisia and elsewhere in the Middle East might become? Given the impetus from social media, the old playbook in travel-danger assessment no longer has validity. And what used to take weeks to develop now takes hours.

Friday is the usual day off in the region, which might partly account for the astonishing volume of street protests today in Egypt. Will they continue at this level? Will they grow? Will more regimes topple? Will you have to watch yourself that you aren't trampled at an airport by fleeing dictators and their entourages with the bags of cash?

One thing for sure: In Cairo, heads are being cracked in the streets. Violence is growing. At least for today, it's bad.

And getting worse. The embattled Egyptian government has turned the army into the streets and put an overnight curfew into effect in Cairo, Alexandria and Suez. The government has also succeeded in largely shutting down Internet and cell-phone service.

By evening in Cairo, the curfew seems not to be working to keep people off the streets. Al Jazeera seemed to be able to move its crews around Cairo more easily than Western broadcast organizations. Here's the Al Jazeera live English feed. Here is their live blog. And here are the Al Jazeera updates on Twitter.

According to an alert on Egypt today by the heads-up global travel intelligence company iJET Intelligent Risk Systems: "Internet, mobile phone SMS text messaging, and Blackberry Messaging service are down across much of Egypt as severe civil unrest continues. Blackberry Internet service is also largely unavailable. Internet service is still available at some hotels that cater to international travelers."

The State Department, which was so quick on the draw last year to issue that way-over-the-top travel alert for all of Europe, is so far mute on the current travel outlook for Egypt, where State Department interests are, shall we say, delicate.

[Update 2 p.m. EST: News accounts in Europe are now saying that the State Department has gotten off the stick and issued a travel alert for Egypt, saying Americans should "defer non-essential travel" there. The State Department is notorious slow in issuing anything to the public, including a passport, so why am I not surprised that while European mainstream news organizations received the travel alert, at this writing the State Department Web site on Egypt, for the American public, has not been updated for nine days?]


[UPDATE: Ah, finally, the new State Department alert is available to the traveling public.

Lots of savvy travelers embark in the winter for places like Cairo because off-season fares are low and the tourist crush is far less than in the summer.

Me, I wouldn't go. Not this week, not next, and maybe not for a long while. In the UK, tour operators are reassessing their advice earlier this month to consider Egypt as an alternative to Tunisia.

The trouble continues in Tunisia, of course, and Yemen, is, as usual, a place to be very careful in. But let's also look even at any developing situations in Jordan. And I'd be keeping at least a casual eye on Morocco, though so far there have been no similar problems.

Saudi Arabia? Hardly a tourist mecca if you're not bound for Mecca, where most of us are not allowed to visit anyway. Trouble there with the regime? Not a sign of it so far -- not that there haven't been warnings from analysts. But don't even think about what that would do to the AAA's usual summer-travel gasoline price forecasts.

Meanwhile, the Web site of the Egyptian airline EgyptAir (which has 180 departures daily from Cairo) is off-line, as is that of Cairo International Airport. EgyptAir is one of the 27 member airlines of Star Alliance.

In the U.S., Delta Air Lines, which became in 2008 the only U.S. carrier to offer direct daily flights between Kennedy airport and Cairo, is still blissfully selling tickets to Cairo on its Web site, where the service is called "A trip fit for a king ... or a Pharaoh."

Delta provides no current travel-advisory information for non-pharaohs who might be rethinking that Cairo trip, or more to the point, desperately trying to get out of Cairo.

Helloooo, Delta: Can you spell social-networking as well as you can spell pharaoh?

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Today's Flight Cancellations: Who's Counting?

Ok, well I guess I'm counting, because the rest of the media keep telling you that "hundreds" of flights were canceled today because of the big snowstorm in the Northeast, and especially in New York City, where 19 inches fell. Baffles me why they can't just look up the actual numbers on FlightStats.com.

More than 1,600 departures and arrivals were canceled today at the three New York City area airports. The hilariously named Newark Liberty International Airport, as usual, had the worst record, accounting for more than 600 canceled flights. Kennedy had more than 500, and La Guardia had about the same.

Philadelphia had 387; Boston 357; Reagan 237, et cetera, et cetera. Even Chicago racked up a lot, with O'Hare having 178 scrubbed flights.

Delays continue to be excessive in the Northeast, and heavy at a lot of other hub airports on the eastern half of the U.S.

By the way, here in warm and sunny southern Arizona, I saw two weeks ago a roadside poster announcing on the start of Little League practice.

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Here We Go: More Snow!

[Airport delays at 7.35 p.m. EST tonight. Tomorrow will be worse. Map via FlightView.com].

Oh, you know. More snow. Hundreds of flight cancellations in the Northeast. Worse tomorrow.

Et cetera.

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