As every law-abiding American knows, if you carry cash around in your pocket, you’re either a terrorist, a drug dealer or an honest liberty-loving citizen.  And the Transportation Safety Administration wants to make sure it knows which is which.  From Radley Balko at the Agitator comes this incredible tape of an interaction between some our friendly, highly-trained airport security folks under the tutelage of the TSA and a guy who just happened to have some cash.

While it’s been the case for quite a while that anyone traveling outside the country carrying more than $10,000 in currency must declare it,  It’s troubling, of course, but intended as a way to catch money laundering, particularly by drug dealers, and the requirement is merely to declare it, not turn it over. 

But it remains lawful in the United States to carry cash.  Some people still do it, preferring not to live on plastic, and in some instances, not to have either a bank or anyone else be in a position to track their whereabouts and expenses from a bank statement.  This explains why the mint still prints up those funny colored rectangular pieces of paper.  Apparently, the mint and the TSA don’t get along well, because the TSA folks don’t like people enjoying the handiwork of the mint.

[Ed. Note: Code isn’t working properly at the moment, and I’m trying to fix it.  Until then, use the link above to see the video.  It’s a great one, and it would be a shame to miss it.]  Aren’t cellphones amazing?  I wish I could figure out how to make mine record with just a touch.  Actually, I wish I could figure out how to make it record at all.

There’s a question of whether this was a targeted approach, due to the fact that Steve Bierfeldt was carrying $4700 in cash from a Campaign for Liberty function, clearly a subversive group of people bent on one of the most hated of all American attributes, freedom.  But to think so would be to attribute a substantial amount of thought to the TSA employees, which I am both unprepared to do and which has no basis in anything they’ve ever done before.  No, I suspect they saw a wad of cash and went into action.

What’s fascinating is that despite his calm, reasonable reaction to the TSA folks, they come off as nasty, brutish and stupid.  As I listened to the encounter, I was imagining how there testimony would be on the stand describing what happened. 

Yes, your honor, we politely requested that the perpetrator provide us with the source of the $3700 (no typo) of illegal funds and he responded that we would be sorry we ever messed with him, at which time we requested that he come with us for further investigation, to which he agreed.

The good news it that they didn’t beat the guy.  That happens sometimes, you know.

But there’s one pressing question that remains unanswered.  What was John Stossel doing there, and what did he contribute?