Posted on 12/05/2010 11:10:31 AM PST by RagingBull
Patdowngate thrust this little-known agent-turned-bureaucrat into the glare of cable lights. Sitting down earlier this week, Mr. Pistole offers good and bad news for America's frequent travelers.
The former first: There will be no additional tortures. Cavity searches or other more expansive body checks are out at least as long as terrorist body bombs require, as today, an external initiator or trigger. "As far as the intrusiveness and the invasiveness of the person, based on what we know, I don't see us going further than" current policy, he says. "I don't think we can, frankly. I think we've probably reached the public limit."
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Cavity searches are out for now? Anyone who is “OK” with what the TSA does doesn’t deserve to be called an American.
What’s next? “In Defense of Child Molestation”?
What the TSA has been doing is both illegal and useless.
If the stupid sheeple hadn't woken up, finally, after waiting too long, you can bet we'd be having cavity searches within the year.
You forgot “disgusting” and “perverted”.
Come on, FRiend, give us a barf alert next time when you post this kind of pro-statist stuff. I know we gotta keep up with the enemy, but I just ate :-)
Yeah, right.
If it gets on the plane, it can removed from cavity and be set off.
I can think of a dozen ways to IMPLANT a trigger — surgically put a whole bomb in abdominal cavity — or include a small digital timer with the explosives, set to go at a determined time.
Remember these are suicide bombers, with doctors to do the work!
Flying Commercial. Just say no.
The bad news is that the terrorists will always be smarter than, and one step ahead of, Pistole and Napolitano, because they know only one formula for security: React.
And thanks to Pistole for telling the terrorists what they need to do in order to guarantee body cavity searches. See paragraph 1.
Nothing in his exposition convinces me that the TSA approach is either legal or effective. His expert understanding uses premeditated ignorance to prevent discussion of effective measures. The time has come to demand brilliant, creative, effective approaches for thwarting terrorists in keeping with the Constitutional mandate to provide an impenetrable defense behind which citizens can establish justice and secure the blessings of liberty. However, the adjectives bright, creative, and effective do not seem to apply to this bureaucrat and his political handlers, who currently insist on managing our safety. In fact their pervasive involvement obscures the realities the rest of us could think through to discover meaningful solutions.
Our society allows police to subject individuals even to abusive intrusions when such actions are deemed reasonable responses to actions. They stop a speeding car. They search with reasonable suspicion based on specific and demonstrable facts. They subdue and even kill a citizen in response to escalating levels of violence. Such responses are not a violation of civil liberties, but police are allowed to erect a barrier by suspending civil liberties for behaviors and characteristics as a precondition for securing the civil liberties of the innocent.
However, TSA bureaucrats are allowed intimate, primal domination of people when they have done nothing to elicit the behavior. The massive, random and warrantless program of body scanners and pat downs creates an environment for institutionalizing the worst demons of the human condition.
This country has before and should not again, suffer the consequences of allowing one group of people dominion over another, when submission was not provoked by the other party’s uncivil behavior. In The Life and Times of Fredrick Douglas, he believed that slavery perpetrated as much emotional and psychological damage on the owner as the slave.
The current TSA approach reminds me of the futile and tragic consequences of gun control legislation, which focuses on the instruments of violence, and ignores the person using the instruments. For just one example consider that in Fairfax County, Virginia guns appear to live passive lives, but as soon as they cross the Potomac River and enter the Anacostia area of Washington D.C. they become psychopaths when under the influence of rigid gun control legislation.
Such seems to be the befuddled focus of TSA procedures, which exclusively look for things. Do procedures ignoring people really make us any safer? Is the impact counterproductive like gun control? Maybe they are merely the only alternatives remaining after everything faces the politically correct gate keepers, who see themselves acting in our best interests, but judge everything according to their personal moral orthodoxy?
The Homeland Security approach contrasts sharply to the disparaged NSA program for warrantless intrusion into private communications, where analysts sought a handful of useful leads from the 60 to 100 billion calls per day. Their standards first passed a Fourth Amendment test, and then focused on much narrower parameters to find signals of interest.
For the NSA probability and statistics enabled approaches, which are otherwise condemned as profiling. TSA should be allowed enhanced surveillance methods, when their rules focus on a body of behaviors and characteristics, even racial or religious, denoting responses with a higher probability for terrorist actions. Note he is so ignorant as to say, “he draws the line at giving TSA officers the right to choose passengers for closer inspection based on their age, ethnicity, religion or sex. In other words, to profile.” Probability substitutes “and” for “or” and builds a total probability on a combination of factors, but we must never go there. However, we must grope grandma, because there is a conceptual possibility, thou a vanishingly small probability she might be a terrorist.
However, a powerful resting inertia must be overcome; such as already dominates the gun control debate. Here abiding faith and political power combine to leave people’s behavior and characteristics out of the equation.
Oh, I love that!
I still do not understand why the ACLU or other legal institutes are not jumping ALL OVER THIS. We are protected from unlawful search (and seizure).
There is no defense for this: it is a violation of the
forth Amendment: I refuse to be subjected to it!
Premeditated ignorance - I like the term the previous commenter used. I don't think it's harsh enough, but I can't come up with a better one, as I'm mentally sputtering over the idiocy of the original comment. But I suppose that's how the Big Lie technique works. You either say "Nah, he wouldn't lie that big", or are rendered speechless by the enormity of what you are hearing.
The ACLU are a bunch of bedfellows with the Democratic Party, call it conspiracy, call it truth, call it a lie. I do not care. As far as I can see from the past few years, they have not proven otherwise.
Comply With Me*
(With deepest apologies to Sammy Cahn, Jimmy Van Heusen & Frank Sinatra)
Comply with me, before you fly away
Remove those shoes and take a cruise
Through my peekaboo X-ray
Comply with me, I’m your friendly TSA
Comply with me, you domestic coach class bums
If you opt out I’ll just give a shout
To my icy-handed chums
Comply with me, bend over here it comes
Once I get all up there where your hair is ticklish
I’ll just fish
Got my wish
Once I get all up there you’ll be squirming like an eel
You may squeal
At the feel
When we’re together
Proctology is such a lovely trade
I’ll show you love with my rubber glove
Try not to be afraid
I’d be a perfect gentleman, if you had just obeyed
Comply with me, I’m GS8 pay grade
Janet Napolitano says to spread ‘em wide
Have you tried Astro-glide?
Janet Napolitano knows your clothes are off
Head aloft
Turn it and cough
When we’re together
Don’t crack wise or I’ll ruin your whole day
Please don’t frown when I pat you down
It alerts the CIA
It’s perfectly legal practice except at Gitmo Bay
Comply with me, comply comply
Comply with me, obey, obey, obey!
Check out the security risks on that one! Yeah!
The ACLU HAS received over 1000 complaints in the last month alone and is requesting and receiving more daily.
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