Child Abuse Case Used to Question the Patriot Act
The Los Angeles Times has done some great reporting of late on airline security, including the scoop last month about passengers who pounced on a man claiming to have a bomb. But a January 20 article about how some airlines are abusing power under the Patriot Act wholly misrepresents the facts.
In an article entitled “In-flight Confrontations Can Lead to Charges Defined as Terrorism,” Times reporters Ralph Vartabedian and Peter Pae write that, “at least 200 passengers have been convicted of felonies under the Patriot Act, often for behavior involving raised voices and profanity.” They tell the story of a single mother named Tamera Jo Freeman to prove their point.
Tamara Jo Freeman, they say, wound up in jail for three months after “she spanked [her children] on the thigh with three swats. It was a small incident,” according to the Times. Tamera Jo Freeman becomes the reporters’ poster girl for what they say is the airlines’ abuse of power. They suggest flight attendants in general — like so many TSA agents — have gone mad with power, co-opting the government’s post-9/11 draconian provisions of the Patriot Act with reckless abandon. So you better watch out. If you “swat” your kids or kiss your girlfriend on an airplane, you too could wind up in prison.
“I had no idea I was breaking the law,” the reporters quote Freeman, 40, as saying. The story ends with Freeman being released from prison only to learn that she has lost custody of her children who were sent to foster care in Hawaii. The final line in the article is a quote from Freeman in which she says, “I have cried. I have cried for my children every day. … I feel the system is failing me.”
What the reporters neglected to mention, though, was that it was in fact Freeman’s own behavior that failed her, long before she found a system to blame. In a U.S. District Court criminal complaint filed against Freeman, a different, horrific story is revealed. Freeman was previously arrested on two criminal counts: “Interference with flight crew” and “Assault [on] and beating individuals who had not attained the age of 16 years.” (I found the complaint thanks to Ken, a former federal prosecutor who blogs anonymously as Ken at Popehat.com.) The event occurred on an airplane and has very little to do with the Patriot Act, except that post 9/11, the charges on the first count elevated Freeman’s crime to a felony.
In this latest incident, Freeman repeatedly punched and slapped her children, a 4-year-old girl and a 2-year-old boy. One eyewitness watched Freeman drop her two-year-old on “his back and head” and leave him crying on the floor. (If that’s a “small incident,” I certainly hope that Vartabedian and Pae don’t have kids). Another eyewitness told an FBI agent that the drunk mother punched both her small children with a closed fist. This raises the question: what motivated the Times reporters to leave these facts out of their story?
The LAT story strikes me as unclear and imprecise. Freeman lost her children, but why? The newspaper implies it was because she was convicted of an infraction under the Patriot Act. Is that all there is to it, or would there have to be a good deal more evidence that she is an unfit, abusive parent?
This LAT article qualifies as innuendo motivated by ideology, IMHO. My thanks to Mrs. J for exposing it — she’s one of the Good Journalists. She’s helping.
(I found the complaint thanks to Ken, a former federal prosecutor who blogs anonymously as Ken at Popehat.com.)
Geez Annie, I wouldn’t want to be your friend or source.
As to the “professional journalists” cherry picking facts, sigh, what else is new? For my entire adult life I found it absurd when newspapers would pick a fact and then scream it. 12% of all Americans like grape over cherry jelly. A full Twelve Per Cent. TWELVE PER CENT. TWELVE PER CENT!!!!!!! (and if that does’t pound it in, they start using bigger and bold fonts)
While ignoring the 88 per cent.
Sadly, it works.
“I wouldn’t want to be your friend or source”
I had the same initial thought, Granny, but when I looked at it twice Annie didn;t give out any more information on “Ken” than he gives himself where he blogs (Popehat.com).
My source requested to be identified that way, which, yes, is how he blogs.
–Annie Jacobsen
Annie respected my anonymity in the manner in which I requested.
Clue: if that were a dad, single or otherwise, you would have had a very different handling.
Only if he were white and non-Muslim. If a Middle Eastern man had done this, the NYT would have been all over his case defending him. Pretty ironic too since beating children (yes, beating in a sense that conservatives would call beating) is considered acceptable as a form of punishment in most Middle Eastern states.
What is it about progressives that makes them hate children so? It sems to be such a common theme on the liberal agenda, whether it’s avoiding pregnancy at all costs, aborting if that fails (or simply fails to generate a cookie cutter concept of perfection), institutionalizing their upbringing if they happen to get born via birth-to-adulthood daycare, and then if all else fails, mortgaging their future to the hilt to pay for adult refusal to be self-reliant? I guess in the long run it indicates that progressivism is a self-limiting enterprise, but in the meantime it certainly makes for an emptier world.
So, the airlines allow 9/11 to happen because they didn’t follow procedure, and now they are arresting people for disciplining their children and kissing? WTF? The entire nation should be leveled, and we should all be forgotten. Our country has lost its identity. We have become greedy, hateful, and selfish. God save us all.