TSA spokeswoman Lorie Dankers, up from Seattle for the occasion, said there are two ways for travelers to join the program. Five U.S. airlines are authorized by TSA to invite selected frequent flyers into PreCheck. Or a person can apply through one of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection's Trusted Traveler programs like Global Entry.
All five of the select airlines serve Anchorage: Alaska, Delta, American, United and U.S. Airways. Bobbie Egan, spokeswoman for Alaska Airlines, said a batch of invitations went out over the weekend by email. If you didn't get one, it won't do any good to call up the airline to complain, she said.
"We don't set the criteria -- the TSA sets the criteria for who's invited to participate," Egan said. "It's a TSA program solely."
I'm not sure what 'invite' means in this case. No one told us until we got to the security line and they scanned our boarding pass and told us to go in that lane. And it's the first time it happened. Is there a little racial profiling mixed up in this? Older white male and female? I'm sure that didn't do any harm. Or maybe NSA has told TSA that we haven't talked to any terrorists lately. Who knows?
The LA Times has an interview today with Professor Sergei Medvedev, an Arctic specialist who is calling for an oil moratorium in the Arctic and who Putin called "a moron." [I'm sure Putin used a Russian word. It would be interesting to know how it translates substantively and emotionally into English.]
"Political science professor Sergei Medvedev, a longtime lover and explorer of the Arctic, drew the ire of Russian President Vladimir Putin when he recently called for international protection of the icy northern region in the face of economic development plans.
Last month, Putin called Medvedev, who teaches at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow, "a moron."
The incident prompted a nationwide discussion of the Arctic and coincided with the arrest of 30 Greenpeace activists protesting a Russian oil drilling project in the region.
Medvedev, 46, who anchors popular television shows and studied and worked for 15 years in the West, spoke to The Times last month at the Architecture Museum in downtown Moscow."
LA Times story about man in prison for 34 years, convicted on eye witness testimony. The witnesses sister has now testified that she told police back then that her sister was lying. Finally it comes out and judge agrees he was falsely convicted.
Prosecutors had argued that about 12:30 p.m. on April 6, 1979, Register shot Jack Sasson five times in the carport of his West Los Angeles home. Sasson, 78, died three weeks later.
At trial, the physical evidence against Register was scant, court papers said. None of the seven fingerprints found on Sasson's car matched Register's. Police never recovered the murder weapon.
They did seize a pair of pinstriped pants from Register's closet, which had a speck of blood smaller than a pencil eraser. But it was of little value — the blood type, O, matched Sasson and Register.
Instead, the prosecution relied on eyewitness testimony, notably that of Brenda Anderson. Then 19, Anderson said she was at home when she heard gunfire, looked out the window and saw an African American man sprinting from the Sassons' carport, court papers said. She identified him as Register, though Register's girlfriend testified that he was with her at the time of the shooting.
Register was convicted and sentenced to 27 years to life in prison. Each time he appeared before the parole board, he refused to admit guilt.
"It appears that the only reason that I have been consistently denied parole is because I have maintained my innocence," he once told the board, court papers said.
Register might have remained behind bars, his attorneys said, if not for a stroke of luck. In late 2011, another of Brenda Anderson's sisters, Sheila Vanderkam, found a website that locates convicted felons. "I typed in the name Kash Register out of curiosity," she said in a declaration, "and learned, to my horror, that Mr. Register was still in prison."
Another example of police and prosecutors apparently more interested in convicting somebody than convicting the right person.
I biked down to Venice Beach just before sunset.
Hope your mom is doing OK.
ReplyDeleteGlad you got through the TSA without problems--the whole airport thing is why I haven't traveled much since moving back to So Cal.
Doing ok is relative. But my being here does seem to give comfort so I'm spending as much time as I can while still keeping things going at home. Thanks.
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