Then they arrested HER and charged her with a made up crime. You can be beat up by police and then have them charge you with a slew of imaginary crimes to cover up the beating, even if you are a law abiding citizen.

I seriously doubt Congressman Filner, who has devoted his entire career to public service and was going to visit our troops in Iraq, assaulted anyone. Fly through Washington DC area airports at your own risk!

This idiot took it upon himself to force his way into a restricted area. Anyone else who did this would have had to have been bailed out of jail. It is time for everyone to play by the same set of rules instead of politicians and celebrities using their "get out of jail free" cards.

When you're an unauthorized person entering a restricted area in an airport. When the airline employee (doing their job) asks you to stop but you push them aside.

But hey – this is "small potatoes". Those airline employees ought to just "get over it" and stop enforcing silly security measures, right Pat?

And this is why..

Battery – an unlawful attack upon another person by beating or wounding, or by touching in an offensive manner.

Definitions found on http://www.dictionary.com.

I say way to go to the employee for pressing charges. Authorized areas within airports are highly secured for good reason. Until the senator has completed the requisite background checks as required by MWAA, he has no business entering those areas any more than I do. To assault and/or batter the employee who was merely protecting his place of employment (gee, could he have been in trouble if he just let the guy run through??) is wrong no matter who you are.

I hope his constituents remember this airline incident when elections roll around!

It's a class 1 misdemeanor, he's not a danger, not a flight risk, etc. It's completely normal that he's out of jail now and will be punished later.

It would help if you learned just a smidge about how suspects are processed before commenting about the "culture of corruption" and claiming Democrats get privileged treament.

The culture of corruption working its majic. I wonder how many calls Nancy had to make to get him released?

No one is allowed to lay hands on anyone. Period.

I hope he's held accountable for his actions but experience tells me he won't be.

"Do you know who I am"?

I can understand a tresspassing charge, but assault and battery? This sounds like overkill to me, and a transit worker looking for a legal payday.

Notice how it was the baggage claim worker who had to file charges against the Congressman? I find it disgraceful how the politically "plugged in" seem to have the system fall all over itself to avoid having any accountability. If this were myself or any other working class slob, we'd be up tp our chins in SWAT team members. Now watch, the defense for this assault will be "The Congressman was merely testing airport security".

When I visited the rest rooms closer to the location, there was quite a crowd.

I had neither the time nor inclination to get closer to the incident however its one of those wierd cases where you are potentially near an event which is reported and you find yourself wondering if this event you are reading about was really the stir you were observing.