Prometheus Unleashed

2.24.2006

Take My Rights, Please!

Too bad I didn’t know about this before the holidays — it would have made a great stocking-stuffer: The Bill of Rights, Security Edition.

Fed up with overzealous TSA agents crawling up your ass with a microscope? (Tom?) Well, here’s a handy-dandy little gadget that will... well, okay, it won’t make even the most observant screener pause, but at the very least, it will serve to register a symbolic — even moderately absurdist — protest.

Your Bill of Rights (with Amendment IV given special red highlighting) printed on a pocket-size metal card. One guaranteed to trip the metal detectors, thus allowing you to dramatically hand over your rights under the Chancellor’s benevolent regime.

Hell, I might buy a whole bunch and mail them to Strauch, Gonzales, and the NSA while I’m at it. After all, I seriously doubt any of them have ever read it.

(Thanks to Penn Jillette — whose radio show is now available in handy-dandy bite-sized podcast form — for the heads-up.)

Labels: Civil Rights, Constitution, Media, Penn Jillette, Podcasting, TSA

: Name: Bill Coughlan; Location: Burke, Virginia, United States

William R. Coughlan is one of the founders of Tohubohu Productions (so even on pictures he doesn’t direct, he can squeeze in an Executive Producer credit) and in-house video producer for The Advisory Board Company. He dabbles in screenwriting, acting, 3-D animation, and writing autobiographical comments in the third person. He is also a published illustrator, has provided schematic graphics for several HBS case studies, designed the acclaimed Protégé clay poker chip line, wrote for the (now-dormant) online literary magazine Inkblots, and acts as editor for the MotherReader weblog (which is not-so-coincidentally written by his wife). He currently resides at a secret compound in Burke, Virginia, with his wife Pam and their two daughters.

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