The TSA and the box people

Via-The Daily Caller

Nick Sorrentino


Probably the reason why I am a libertarian, deep down, is that I hate bullies. I despise people who feel they must inflict their particular brand of crap on those who are minding their own business. I loathe arbitrary rules. I loathe those who revel in such arbitrary rules even more. If I am not messing with you, don’t mess with me. Why do so many people have a problem with this concept? Why must some people have other people bend to their will? What is this deep need by a large portion of the population?

I am convinced that the main reason for this is that there are some people who just cannot stand being out of control. They know that if they are not in control, some unforeseen incident might throw them back on their heels and diminish their day, the balance in their bank account, or their place in society. Some people would rather live in a box, where at least everything is controlled, where no sun shines, than be subject to the winds of insecurity.

Because those who prefer the comfort of the box are often the people who make the rules, the rest of us are compelled to live their way. This, even though some of us consider a life in a box a fate on par with death, when we will have plenty of time to become acquainted with the peace and quiet of a box.

This is why many people have no problem with the TSA looking at them naked or even feeling them up. They are so damn scared that the plane will explode that many people just say, “Screw it, I have little dignity left anyway, I’m already prostrate to the bank, so what if the government wants to touch my genitals or those of my child. At least I can rest assured that my plane to Columbus won’t blow up midair.”

Of course the plane has as good a chance of crashing as it ever did, which is a much greater chance than it ever had of being blown up by a terrorist. But people want to feel like they have control, or the government has control, or somebody has control, so they comply. We bend over for “peace of mind,” despite how absurdly irrational this perceived peace is.

I know I am in the minority on this, but I am willing to take the chance that a terrorist is going to blow up a plane if it means I get to board the plane without some government worker looking at my admittedly Adonis like body, or feeling my “area,” or frankly without having to take my shoes off.

What is the damn point of living in “The Home of the Free” if we are being accosted by our own government every time we want to get on a plane?

It is true that there is no “right to fly” in the Constitution. But there is a provision against unreasonable searches and seizures. The problem is what is “reasonable” has been defined for too long by those who sneer when they hear the words, “Live Free or Die.” It has been defined by the box people.

Nick Sorrentino is the Editor of the Liberty and Economics Review, and the CEO of Exelorix.com a social media management company.

Thanking God for What Makes Us Exceptional

Via-Pajamas Media

Being thankful that “Don’t touch my junk” is today’s version of “Give me liberty or give me death.”

by Mary Grabar

This Thanksgiving season I am thankful for small pleasures, like being able to order a Mad Happy Ale at Twain’s in Decatur, Georgia, and listen to jazz, bluegrass, and blues musicians jamming on various days of the week.

I am thankful that we ended Prohibition. I am thankful that free enterprise is working on a small scale at Twain’s, where musicians gather on their own time and play for tips, where waiters work for tips, where the brewers are free to concoct that nectar of the gods, Mad Happy Ale. I am glad that I am able to stop by there on my way home after a hard afternoon of working in that most un-free of American institutions, the university.

I am glad that the government has not yet decided to restrict which musicians can play at Twain’s or how many barrels of Mad Happy Ale Twain’s can brew or how much they can discount it on certain nights. It’s supply and demand, and I know that when I requested Mad Happy Ale last Sunday afternoon and they were out, my vote, along with others, set the master brewer brewing that hoppy ambrosia.

I am thankful that I am not flying this holiday season, and I am thankful that Americans are protesting the government’s unlawful searches. I am thankful that the American spirit still lives. “Don’t touch my junk” is today’s version of “Give me liberty or give me death.” That primitive part of our brains that instinctively reaches for a weapon against the searches of law-abiding Americans has not been bred out of most Americans.

I am thankful that I can read Ann Coulter’s columns that reveal the stupidity of such “safety” measures. I am glad my father decided to go to the United States instead of Canada, as some of his eight siblings did. Canada would not allow Ann Coulter entrance to give a talk and speak her mind.

The country I was born in, Slovenia, part of the artificial conglomeration called Yugoslavia, was communist; my parents took me out when I was little.

But despotism lives on in people even when they physically leave the despotic country. They become apathetic, suspicious, afraid, depressed. I saw some of it in my parents, but especially among parents of my Ukrainian friends. They had good reason. Their relatives were starved to death by a government that took control of the food supply. Could something like that happen in America?

Alexis de Tocqueville warned about this soft despotism. I am thankful that capitalists set up a foundation to pay my salary so that I can teach Tocqueville, because the university where I teach would surely frown upon my placement of Democracy in America on my syllabus. I am thankful that after showing Ronald Reagan’s 1964 speech, I could show newly elected Congressman Allen West’s video to my class. He is the Patrick Henry of our day.

I am thankful for the Tea Party, that group of Americans not cowed by the long arm of the government, that group that is clinging to their guns and religion, and that helped elect Allen West. There is still much for them to learn, but I am thankful that so many ordinary Americans have volunteered their hours and dollars to preserving freedom. I am thankful that voters were alarmed and awakened this election.

I am thankful that 70 percent of Oklahoma voters voted to prevent sharia law from taking hold. I shudder at what CAIR is thinking of doing next, like taking away my Mad Happy Ale and music because it offends Muslim sensibilities.

Come to think of it, it’s good to go to a place like Twain’s and never see anyone wearing a hijab. It’s a good place to begin a revolution.

I know that the more “enlightened” “conservatives,” like Kathleen Parker and David Brooks, would dismiss my and other immigrants’ instinctive fears as irrational. (But then again I instinctively think there is something wrong with cozying up to Eliot Spitzer on national television.)

These people are part of the inner circle. They are useful to the regime in power, just as a certain member of the Communist party in my father’s village who owned the only car there in 1969 was. The others?

Well, the name “Tito” was whispered in the privacy of a home (built according to the architectural plan established by the government). But here in the U.S.A. we had average citizens dressing down a turncoat senator at a townhall meeting!

When I see a photo of Janet Napolitano I see Josef Broz Tito. Big Sis ordered her agents to be on the lookout for those like me, who place “Don’t Tread on Me” bumper stickers on their cars.

Many immigrants from Eastern European countries could not understand how Americans could have elected Obama. Well, our historical memory was wiped clean by the educationists, so that we could not see the threat in our midst.

But then as the emperor kept lecturing, hectoring, blaming, ridiculing, and prodding, he provoked the “sleeping giant” and that was the American spirit.

While some like Debra Saunders rationalize invasive body searches of law-abiding American citizens, there is still an instinctive reaction to such government tyranny. We’ve had two years of an onslaught of government experts imposing their regulations on us, expanding executive power, breaking promises, coddling terrorists, and passing legislation in the dead of night.

A law-abiding, generous, welcoming people can take only so much from a government that flatters its enemies, disparages its own citizens, ignores criminality, and seeks to institute itself in every facet of citizens’ lives. There is still something in the American character that shudders at the picture of a long line of docile people being herded into a transportation conveyance, while indifferent, ill-educated government employees ogle, prod, and poke their bodies. They understand what such government invasion means psychologically and spiritually, how it demoralizes a brave and free people. We may be boarding 747s instead of cattle cars, but the American spirit rebels. We know there are better ways, like arming ourselves.

There has been a “long train of abuses” over these last two years. There are still some like Congressman-elect Allen West who see these and say, “Pick up your bayonets” and “CHARGE!”

Isn’t it amazing that someone whose forebears were slaves could strike such a chord among free Americans and inspire them to elect him as their representative? It could happen in no other country. We still speak out and speak honestly. We still sit tall in the saddle. We still have our six-guns at our sides. We will not be prodded and herded along. This is American exceptionalism, what makes us different.

I thank God for that.

Mary Grabar earned her Ph.D. in English from the University of Georgia and teaches in the Atlanta area. She is a Pushcart Prize-nominated poet and published fiction writer. Visit her website and get on her mailing list at MaryGrabar.com. Mary blogs at the TheLiterateCitizen.com

Video-I screen myself

Via-Libertarian Republican

The T.S. of A takes control

Via-WAPO

George F Will

Fifty years ago, William F. Buckley wrote a memorable complaint about the fact that Americans do not complain enough. His point, like most of the points he made during his well-lived life, is, unfortunately, more pertinent than ever. Were he still with us, he would favor awarding the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which he received in 1991, to John Tyner, who, when attempting to board a plane in San Diego, was provoked by some Transportation Security Administration personnel.

When Buckley was asked how he came up with topics for three columns a week, he jauntily replied that the world annoyed him that frequently. The fecundity of the world as an irritant was on display one winter evening in 1960 when Buckley found himself in an insufferably hot car on a New Haven Railroad commuter train from Grand Central Station to his Stamford, Conn., home. Everyone was acutely uncomfortable; no one was complaining.

"In a more virile age, I thought, the passengers would have seized the conductor and strapped him down on a seat over the radiator to share the fate of his patrons." But he had "nonchalantly walked down the gauntlet of eighty sweating American freemen, and not one of them had asked him to explain why the passengers in that car had been consigned to suffer."

Buckley, who was gifted at discerning the metaphysical significance of the quotidian, thought that he saw civilization tottering on its pedestal. He was not mistaken:

"It isn't just the commuters, whom we have come to visualize as a supine breed who have got onto the trick of suspending their sensory faculties twice a day while they submit to the creeping dissolution of the railroad industry. It isn't just they who have given up trying to rectify irrational vexations. It is the American people everywhere."

Happily, not quite everywhere today. Not anywhere where Tyners are.

NAPOLITANO: THE BALL’S IN MY COURT NOW

Via-Ann Coulter.com

Ann Coulter

After the 9/11 attacks, when 19 Muslim terrorists -- 15 from Saudi Arabia, two from the United Arab Emirates and one each from Egypt and Lebanon, 14 with "al" in their names -- took over commercial aircraft with box-cutters, the government banned sharp objects from planes.

Airport security began confiscating little old ladies' knitting needles and breaking the mouse-sized nail files off of passengers' nail clippers. Surprisingly, no decrease in the number of hijacking attempts by little old ladies and manicurists was noted.

After another Muslim terrorist, Richard Reid, AKA Tariq Raja, AKA Abdel Rahim, AKA Abdul Raheem, AKA Abu Ibrahim, AKA Sammy Cohen (which was only his eHarmony alias), tried to blow up a commercial aircraft with explosive-laden sneakers, the government prohibited more than 3 ounces of liquid from being carried on airplanes.

All passengers were required to take off their shoes for special security screening, which did not thwart a single terrorist attack, but made airport security checkpoints a lot smellier.

After Muslim terrorist Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab of Nigeria tried to detonate explosive material in his underwear over Detroit last Christmas, the government began requiring nude body scans at airports.

The machines, which cannot detect chemicals or plastic, would not have caught the diaper bomber. So, again, no hijackers were stopped, but being able to see passengers in the nude boosted the morale of airport security personnel by 22 percent.

After explosives were inserted in two ink cartridges and placed on a plane headed to the United States from the Muslim nation of Yemen, the government banned printer cartridges from all domestic flights, resulting in no improvement in airport security, while requiring ink cartridges who traveled to take Amtrak.

So when the next Muslim terrorist, probably named Abdul Ahmed al Shehri, places explosives in his anal cavity, what is the government going to require then? (If you're looking for a good investment opportunity, might I suggest rubber gloves?)

Last year, a Muslim attempting to murder Prince Mohammed bin Nayef of Saudi Arabia blew himself up with a bomb stuck up his anus. Fortunately, this didn't happen near an airport, or Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano would now be requiring full body cavity searches to fly.

You can't stop a terrorist attack by searching for the explosives any more than you can stop crime by taking away everyone's guns.

In the 1970s, liberal ideas on crime swept the country. Gun owners were treated like criminals while actual criminals were coddled and released. If only we treated criminals with dignity and respect and showed them the system was fair, liberals told us, criminals would reward us with good behavior.

As is now well known, crime exploded in the '70s. It took decades of conservative law-and-order policies to get crime back to near-1950s levels.

It's similarly pointless to treat all Americans as if they're potential terrorists while trying to find and confiscate anything that could be used as a weapon. We can't search all passengers for explosives because Muslims stick explosives up their anuses. (Talk about jobs Americans just won't do.)

You have to search for the terrorists.

Fortunately, that's the one advantage we have in this war. In a lucky stroke, all the terrorists are swarthy, foreign-born, Muslim males. (Think: "Guys Madonna would date.")

This would give us a major leg up -- if only the country weren't insane.

Is there any question that we'd be looking for Swedes if the 9/11 terrorists, the shoe bomber, the diaper bomber and the printer cartridge bomber had all been Swedish? If the Irish Republican Army were bombing our planes, wouldn't we be looking for people with Irish surnames and an Irish appearance?

Only because the terrorists are Muslims do we pretend not to notice who keeps trying to blow up our planes.

It would be harder to find Swedes or Irish boarding commercial airliners in the U.S. than Muslims. Swarthy foreigners stand out like a sore thumb in an airport. The American domestic flying population is remarkably homogenous. An airport is not a Sears department store.

Only about a third of all Americans flew even once in the last year, and only 7 percent took more than four round trips. The majority of airline passengers are middle-aged, middle-class, white businessmen with about a million frequent flier miles. I'd wager that more than 90 percent of domestic air travelers were born in the U.S.

If the government did nothing more than have a five-minute conversation with the one passenger per flight born outside the U.S., you'd need 90 percent fewer Transportation Security Administration agents and airlines would be far safer than they are now.

Instead, Napolitano just keeps ordering more invasive searches of all passengers, without exception -- except members of Congress and government officials, who get VIP treatment, so they never know what she's doing to the rest of us.

Two weeks ago, Napolitano ordered TSA agents to start groping women's breasts and all passengers' genitalia -- children, nuns and rape victims, everyone except government officials and members of Congress. (Which is weird because Dennis Kucinich would like it.)

"Please have your genitalia out and ready to be fondled when you approach the security checkpoint."

This is the punishment for refusing the nude body scan for passengers who don't want to appear nude on live video or are worried about the skin cancer risk of the machines -- risks acknowledged by the very Johns Hopkins study touted by the government.

It is becoming increasingly obvious that we need to keep the government as far away from airport security as possible, and not only because Janet Napolitano did her graduate work in North Korea

Get the Government Out of Our Pants

Via-REASON

Has the Transportation Security Administration finally gone too far?

 Steve Chapman


When it comes to protecting against terrorism, this is how things usually go: A danger presents itself. The federal government responds with new rules that erode privacy, treat innocent people as suspicious, and blur the distinction between life in a free society and life in a correctional facility. And we all tamely accept the new intrusions, like sheep being shorn.

Maybe not this time.

The war on terrorism is going to get personal. Very personal. Americans have long resented the hassles that go with air travel ever since 9/11—long security lines, limits on liquids, forced removal of footwear, and so on. But if the Transportation Security Administration has its way, we will look back to 2009 as the good old days.

The agency is rolling out new full-body scanners, which eventually will replace metal detectors at all checkpoints. These machines replicate the experience of taking off your clothes, but without the fun. They enable agents to get a view of your body that leaves nothing to the imagination.

A lot of people, of course, couldn't care less if a stranger wants to gaze upon everything God gave them. But some retain a modesty that makes them reluctant to parade naked in front of people they don't know, even virtually. Henceforth, Jennifer Aniston is going to think twice before flying commercial.

Besides the indignity of having one's body exposed to an airport screener, there is a danger the images will find a wider audience. The U.S. Marshals Service recently admitted saving some 35,000 images from a machine at a federal courthouse in Florida. TSA says that will never happen. Human experience says, oh, yes, it will.

For the camera-shy, TSA will offer an alternative: "enhanced" pat-downs. And you'll get a chance to have an interesting conversation with your children about being touched by strangers. This is not the gentle frisking you may have experienced at the airport in the past. It requires agents to probe aggressively in intimate zones—breasts, buttocks, crotches. If you enjoyed your last mammography or prostate exam, you'll love the enhanced pat-down.

Reviews of the procedure are coming in, and they are not raves. The Allied Pilots Association calls it a "demeaning experience," and one pilot complained it amounted to "sexual molestation." The head of a flight attendants' union local said that for anyone who has been sexually assaulted, it will "drudge up some bad memories."

But the option of the full-body scanner is not so appealing, either, even leaving out privacy concerns. Two pilots' unions have advised members not to go through the scanners because of the possible risks of being bombarded with low doses of radiation.

"There is good reason to believe that these scanners will increase the risk of cancer to children and other vulnerable populations," a group of scientists from the University of California at San Francisco informed the White House.

Aviation trade groups fear the public has finally been pushed over the edge. "We have received hundreds of e-mails and phone calls from travelers vowing to stop flying," Geoff Freeman, executive vice president of the U.S. Travel Association, told Reuters.

The new policy is being challenged in court by the Electronic Privacy Information Center, which says it violates the Fourth Amendment's ban on unreasonable searches. But don't expect judges to save us.

Says Stanford University law professor Robert Weisberg, with resignation in his voice, "Airports are pretty much a Fourth Amendment-free zone."

Though the harm to privacy is certain, the benefit to public safety is not. The federal Government Accountability Office has said it "remains unclear" if the scanners would have detected the explosives carried by the would-be Christmas Day bomber.

They would also be useless against a terrorist who inserts a bomb in his rectum—like the al-Qaida operative who blew himself up last year in an attempt to kill a Saudi prince. Full-body scanning will sorely chafe many innocent travelers, while creating only a minor inconvenience to bloodthirsty fanatics.

The good news is that last year, the House of Representatives voted to bar the use of whole-body scanners for routine screening. But only a sustained public outcry will force a change.

We will soon find out if there is a limit to the sacrifices of personal freedom that Americans will endure in the name of fighting terrorism. If we don't say no when they want to inspect and handle our private parts, when will we?