Free Republic

My brother sent me a carton full of beautifully wrapped and beribboned Christmas packages, most of them containing clothes but a few containing plastic model airplanes for my son. When I opened the carton I found that a number of the packages had been slit up one of the short sides and the side flaps of the box pushed in so that anyone could see what was inside. I could only imagine that this was done for security purposes. Is this standard, now--to slice open Christmas presents and check to see what's inside them? I was a bit shocked, especially...

Reporting from Denver — A Colorado man thinks he's found a way to protect your private parts from unwanted radiation and government peeping at airports. Jeff Buske of Larkspur is selling tungsten-lined underwear online, with fibers of the X-ray-repelling material strategically placed over the crotch. He says he's seen his sales skyrocket in the last week, since the Transportation Security Administration began rolling out full-body scanners at several airports and conducting aggressive pat-downs of people who refuse to use them. "You shouldn't have to be digitally strip-searched or doused with radiation to visit your grandmother," Buske, a 52-year-old electrical engineer,...

Foes of the Transportation Security Agency's new air-screening procedures, including law enforcement-style pat-downs and what have been called "virtual strip searches," had hoped that today's Senate hearing would lead to a privacy outcry on Capitol Hill. Not quite. The hearing quickly cleaved along partisan lines, with Democratic senators applauding the Obama administration and Republicans offering only modest criticism. "Mr. Pistole, you're doing a great job," Jay Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat and chairman of the Senate committee overseeing air travel, told TSA chief John Pistole, a former FBI agent who's had the job since July. For emphasis, Rockefeller added a...