Argh

"Feds apologize for woman's strip search":

The Homeland Security Department sent a letter apologizing to a Muslim woman who was detained at the Tampa airport and strip searched at a county jail.

Safana Jawad, 45, a Spanish citizen who was born in Iraq, was detained on April 11 because of a suspected tie to a suspicious person, authorities said. She was held for two days before being deported to England.

Wow, I had to fly out of the Tampa airport just a month before that. She was detained because of a suspected tie to a "suspicious" person? Like, they thought she might be connected to someone they thought might be suspicious? Jesus, dude, who doesn't fit that description?

I'm also curious about why they deported her to England if she was a Spanish citizen. Maybe that's just the origin of her flight into Tampa, I guess.

For awhile I kind of avoided flying because that one especially turbulent flight from Boston freaked me out. Now I'm more freaked out by the possibility that someone I might or might not have taken a college class with might be a "suspect" by Homeland Security, which might be reason enough to keep me from vacationing in Tampa or Albuquerque or wherethefuckever, by way of a strip search and a two-day stay in some county jail somewhere. Or it might be reason enough to do a whole lot worse to me--after all, I've publicly admitted Democratic tendencies and unashamedly protested the invasion of Iraq, for starters. That's like treason these days, right?