I don’t travel a lot. I’ve been out of the country four times, and visited the east coast of the United States twice. I make an occasional road-trip to the Sierra Nevadas. Last weekend, I took a family trip down to Long Beach, California. As has happened to me before at Oakland International Airport, my boarding pass, and that of my wife, were marked for secondary screening. We had gone through secondary screening before, and thought it mildly odd that we would get the extra scrutiny twice out of our past two trips. Imagine my surprise when we are again marked for secondary screening on our way back from Long Beach, CA, a scant four days later.

We asked the screener at Long Beach what might have marked us, as we seem to be getting inspected more carefully than your typical traveler. “I don’t know, the computer does it,” he replied. He continued, as we were asking in a more conversational tone than anything else: “did you get one-way tickets?” No, they were round-trip. “Hmm, did you pay for them in cash, or same-day?” No, we ordered our tickets online a few weeks ahead of time. “I don’t know, then; it’s supposedly random.”

Now I don’t have any reasonable expectation that the guy that waves the metal-detector wand at your genitals is going to have an intimate knowledge of the methods and theory behind the “you’re singled out for special attention” algorithm, so I let it slide. No reason to ruin the guy’s day because we had to take our shoes off and wait for a respectful and gentle pat-down. I spent a fair amount of time on the flight considering what could have gotten me marked.

• My mother reports getting the secondary screening a lot. We share a surname and come from the same place, so whatever is triggering her extra scrutiny may be the same cause for my nuclear family’s.
• I have a personal record for mouthing of on public electronic fora, and have expressed the occasional not-perfectly-aligned-with-the-government viewpoint. Perhaps some system saw me bickering with folks on Sonoma.general and put my name on a list that bled into the TSA database?
• My wife works for the state, in a position that puts her in direct contact with rather intelligent, if sometimes petty, members of the public. Her position also brings her into contact with some rather intelligent, if somewhat ambitious, members of the government. The nature of her position wouldn’t bring her into contact with anybody directly related to the Department of Homeland Security, though, so I would have to rule that out.
• My son, somehow in his 4-month life, may have attempted the violent overthrow of the government. I can’t say for certain, but I’m sure he didn’t mean anything by it. He’s just a kid.
• Or, I’m just being mildly paranoid. It’s certainly possible that three of my last four flights have merited extra screening by coincidence.

I’m definitely not on the no-fly-list, or they wouldn’t have given me my boarding pass in the first place. Any additional theories are welcome.

I’m glad to see that you think that Cindy Sheehan being arrested in the gallery of the House is somehow funny. What you just saw happening was an American citizen being put in irons for expressing a political opinion contrary to that of her government. My representative in congress, Lynne Woolsey, invited Mrs. Sheehan to the State of the Union tonight, as is her privilege as a duly-elected member of that legislative body.

I do not know precisely who made the decision to remove her from the building, but it seems to me that wearing a t-shirt with “2,245 Dead � How Many More??” printed on it does not in itself constitute unlawful behavior, and would not, in itself, cause any significant disruption to the presentation at hand. A government that cannot countenance peaceful protest and the airing of grievances against it is a government that should not be allowed to hold power. Whoever made the decision to remove Mrs. Sheehan should resign his or her position or be removed.

Shortly after the State of the Union speech concluded, I tuned in to MSNBC’s post-speech coverage, hosted by Chris Matthews. Repeatedly during the minutes after the speech, he laughed out loud in reference to the arrest. Upon interviewing one of my Senators, Dianne Feinstein, Matthews put to her a question relating the arrest to the possibility of a Senate bid by Sheehan against Feinstein. Again, the result was laughter, by both Matthews and the Senator. Shame on both of you. One of your constituents just became, quite literally, a political prisoner and you seem to think it’s a punchline.