[Triple Word Score]

The question isn't whether or not it's acceptable to sacrifice genuine liberty for safety. The question is whether this particular set of laws, here being condemned without an alternate plan, has done so.

Remember the Dems did vote YEA here. If they had a better plan, that was the time to offer it and campaign for it. They didn't have one. It's their PC sensibilities that watered this one down into a harassing nuisance at airports. We can't selectively pick on the people whom we know to be the risk--we have to pick on everybody. But are 80-year-old grandmothers actually having to go to jail, or having their phones bugged by the FBI? I doubt it. They're just be harassed by bumptious individuals at airports. A slight delay, an insulting inconvenience--but no net loss of freedom.

There probably is more inconvenience by busybody bureaucrats and low-wage security workers than there has ever been before, to a select few, but is there a genuine and pervasive loss of fundamental freedom and privacy by all Americans?

[Protagoras]

If you know about the "know your customer" and "sneek and peek" provisions of the law and don't think that they are a loss of freedom, particularly going forward I question what the idea of freedom really is.

[Dan Evans]

I would say that being hauled away in handcuffs for making a harmless joke is a violation of freedom.

Or having harmless jewlry or nail clippers confiscated, body searches, women (and men) being groped are all violations of liberty.

The constitution says no unreasonable searches. To me that means you can't be searched unless they have good reason to suspect you.

Airport security is gradually turning people into obedient, servile sheep who will be far less likely to defend themselves when the next attack comes.