Another Grand Canyon-sized foul-up by the TSA

Ashley Brandt was all smiles last week when she went to board a flight home after a belated birthday trip to the Grand Canyon. Then, standing in an airport security line in Phoenix, her jaw dropped. According to Brandt, an agent with the Transportation Security Administration took a look at her D.C. license and began to shake her head. “I don’t know if we can accept these,” Brandt recalled the agent saying. “Do you have a U.S. passport?’ Brandt was dumbfounded, and quickly grew a little scared. A manager was summoned, she says. “I started thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, I have to get home. Am I going to get home?’ ” The long Presidents’ Day weekend had been Brandt’s boyfriend’s first chance to make good on a December birthday promise to take Brandt to see the Grand Canyon. The two were now on their way back, and the next morning, a class would be waiting for Brandt at her Cleveland Park preschool a couple of miles north of the White House. But the implication from the TSA agent seemed clear to Brandt: The District is not a state; TSA requires a state-issued ID to board a plane. Never mind that Brandt had used her brand-new D.C. license, the one marked “District of Columbia” over a backdrop of cherry blossoms, to board her flight to Arizona days earlier. Brandt says the agent yelled out to a supervisor, working in adjacent security line. Are D.C. licenses valid identification? Brandt says she could hear the response, “Yeah, we accept those.” “She didn’t seem to know that it was basically the same as a state ID,” said Brandt, who had only recently traded her Maryland ID for one from the District. “D.C. is obviously not a state, but I didn’t ever imagine it would be a problem — I mean, the whole population of D.C. has to use these.” Within a few minutes, Brandt said she was on her way to the gate and her pulse was settling back to normal. But flabbergasted by the experience, Brandt’s boyfriend, Alan Chewning, who had passed security without an incident in another line, fired off this tweet: “Holy. [Expletive]. TSA @ PHX asked for gf’s passport because her valid DC license deemed invalid b/c ‘DC not a state.’” By the time the two landed, the tweet had gone viral, and stories were flooding in of residents recounting similar horror stories of trying to board a flight with a license from Guam or Puerto Rico. If nothing else, Brandt’s ordeal offered a fresh rallying cry for advocates of D.C. statehood. So if you work for the TSA, please bear this in mind: Washington D.C. and insular areas of the United States are still part of the USA. Their ID is just as good as whatever one you have. Back in Arizona, Governor Jan Brewer has vetoed a bill that would have allowed business owners who cited their religious beliefs to turn away gay customers. Ms Brewer said the bill could have had "unintended and negative consequences". The broad-reaching bill was based around protecting religious freedoms, but would also have given legal protection to those discriminating against others. Its authors argued people should be allowed not to sell something or serve someone, if doing so went against their religious beliefs. Its opponents were big and powerful - the gay rights movement in America has momentum and strong support. Apple, which is bringing a new factory and 2,000 jobs to Arizona, urged the governor to veto the bill, as did American Airlines, the Marriott hotel chain, and a group responsible for bringing Super Bowl XLIX to the state.