Standing up for our eroding civil liberties

Pravda.ru ^ | December 21, 2011 | Amy Alkon

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

This country's Founding Fathers were a bunch of obnoxious jerks -- and I mean that in the most reverent way. These were men who were fiercely opposed to blind obedience to authority, and who laid their lives on the line to flip it the bird. Oh, how disappointingly -- and dangerously -- far we've fallen. Our Constitutional rights are increasingly being eroded -- at TSA checkpoints, at police stops where citizens are arrested for videotaping, and elsewhere -- and so many Americans are just sitting there blinking like livestock.

At the airport this past March, I wasn't one of those people, and that sometimes comes with a price. In my case, $500,000. That's what a TSA agent's lawyer is demanding from me for "defaming" her client by saying she sexually violated me during the pat-down, and then for "libeling" her when I blogged about it. Marc J. Randazza, the First Amendment lawyer defending me, called her case "meritless," but this woman's notion that I should fund her existence for the rest of her life because I stood up for my Constitutional rights is beyond disgusting.

On March 31, 2011, I was flying out of LAX to attend a psychology conference in New York. When I reached the TSA checkpoint in the United terminal, I found that I had no choice but to get the pat-down. Tears welled up in my eyes -- for how we've allowed the Constitution to be ripped up at the airport door and because I was powerless to stop a total stranger from running her hands over the most private parts of my body as a condition of normal, ordinary business travel.

[Jack Hammer]

Constitution?

WHAT constitution????

Fuggedaboudit.

The US Constitution is little more than a museum exhibit these days.

And the elitist media are loving it - they’ve always felt they’re more qualified to run the government than the Great Unwashed; i.e., we the people.

[gogogodzilla]

No, it’s always been this vile. We just turned a blind eye first... because it was so soon after September 11th... and then later, because President Bush was for it.

[itsahoot]

I went only to "centrist" news outlets (as opposed to any news outlets that would be seen to be right-leaning) because I wanted this piece to have the widest possible readership -- it needs to be widely read to have any effect; in order to have any number of American women take me up on my idea of being civilly disobedient at TSA checkpoints.

Well that worked out really well.