thank god for a voice of reason

a voice of reason you are so correct thank you Mr Pitt

this is the first time i've been seriously disappointed in a perspective articulated on Truthout. Vapid, reactionary, irrational, chauvinistic tripe. Why bother printing it at all?

The machines are unsafe and don't protect against explosives. The groping is an embarrassing invasion of privacy at the very least.

What part of that don't you get, Mr. Pitt?

You watch different MSM than I do. The ones I watch just love this new stuff. Can't wait to be groped or x-rayed or both.

And as far as us poor folk (I'm one of them) not bothering about this stuff - we ride buses and trains, and Ms. Neopolitano can't wait to extend the procedures to those.

There's no conspiracy. We're all, the ordinary people, mad as hell, and this is just one more straw on the camel's back, a big one.

yeah well the rapescan machines wouldn't have spotted the underwear bomb so your argument is moot.

As with any other x-ray machine, nobody sees "naked children" with these machines. What a ridiculous load of conspiracy crap.

And yes, I've been through these machines a number of times (in countries other than the U.S.) and no, nobody saw my private parts.

'Reasonable'.
The scanner were mandated. The Chinese use a hand held device costing 1/10th as much that actually works to screen drugs, etc.
The search for 'perfect security' ignores not only that the passengers themselves provide the most committed and immediate resource against nonsense ; but that in a real, actual, and known environment of 'terrorism' - Afghanistan - such procedures are not enforced because the local population would murder the perverts perpetrating such a scheme.

"Those who would give up essential liberty for a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."

The government admits to reading our e-mails and listening to our phone calls. This is the next step in violating your right to privacy. This is when it becomes physical. This isn't about being safe. This is about fear, shame, humiliation, and a lot of crooks making a lot of money. The pat downs are punishment for not going through the machines. Anyone who wants to smuggle explosives on to a plain can put enough c4 into a condom and put it in his/her rectum. The machines won't pick that up and neither will the pat down. So, the next logical step is an actual strip search.

To the author. This isn't about whether or not you can afford to fly, so you don't care. This is about the precedent being set. This is about the American people becoming willing and submissive sheep, apparently, you included. As has been stated above, the "Underwear Bomber" boarded a plane in Germany.

I personally find it appalling that this issue is even debatable among the people. What's next? Chertov has said he wants these machines in bus stations and train stations. Anywhere where money can be made from them, they will be there. A police state is being put into place while the public remains distracted and hypnotized with technology. We are given just enough cheese to keep satisfied while the country is being looted and we are being distracted. I hope and prey that the people really are waking up. The alternative is truly frightening.

"It is as bad as you think and they are out to get you."

To some extent the checks are part of a show of security. It reminds me of the armed kids in camos walking around airports after 9/11 I was more worried about them than I was about terrorists.
Re the TSA, .I don't like being on the same wave length as the right wing and would not make a fuss about this other than asking for frisking rather than radiation.
However it is true that the machines are not foolproof and do constitute a risk, especially if they are not well maintained.
At the same time, I wish someone, anyone, would raise the same stink about the far worse practice of torture of prisoners.

It seems the Dutch have it right: a machine that does not Xray but rather uses a non-invasive method to identify suspicious items on a body--which, presumably, could then be hand-searched. We need to lobby for this.

Since there's no indication that any threat originates in the US, somebody is lobbying for Xray machines so money can be made. Given that, it's doubly and painfully obvious that Xray and groping are not necessary.

I'm planning to fly this month and am practicing saying, "Privacy, please, a same-sex officer and same-sex witness."

Pitt Is As Lost As An Easter Egg Here - trying to shoehorn every issue into his precious Left/Right paradigm, as it disintegrates before our very eyes. Note that the 'underwear bomber' who Pitt embarrassingly evokes - in his lockstep service to the DHS - committed his ridiculous crime just days before the rollout of these ridiculous machines, which had been ordered a year before. Many citizens are awakening from their long slumber now, but Pitt is still asleep, clutching the comfortably familiar Liberal/Progressive teddy bear who has told him that the 'right' caused all problems. I worked on Kerry's campaign and gave a lot of money to O's, and voted for Nader (after I figured out O was not for real) - I was sickened by everything Bush did, AND O is continuing the very worst of it. Time to Grow up and Wake up, Pitt - we need adults in this debate. If posters here at all represent popular sentiment, TSA is finished - and most will not be fooled again by whatever contrived crisis emerges to justify their illegal actions - no matter how big it is.

There is no defense for a police state. There is no defense to use invasive machines when non-invasive (infra-red) exist, but obviously owned by entities without the right connections. There is no defense to lie, lie, and lie about the machines, what they can do, and why you do it.

The government supposedly wants us to "feel" safe when they well know this is not about real safety. I will not condone violating our Constitution for a farce.....And now, as typical... bring on the next false flag event.

Two writers from the Nation.com tried this same partisan tack and got scolded for it by Glen Greenwald at Salon.com-Fact is that this should be an issue that should unite Democrats, Independents, Greens and Republicans. This is too important to dismiss so.

TSA BLINKED! OPT OUT WORKS-KEEP IT UP through New Years Day.

The TSA Opt Out Day Protest Worked Beautifully And Caused TSA To Change Its Body Scanner Policy for the day. Reports from around the country indicate that TSA primarily used metal scanners. At many airports the body scanners were turned off. Passengers did not have to make a choice between the body scanners or a pat down. TSA changed its methods to marginalize the Opt Out protests and the Major Media who wanted it to fail from the get go are pretending absolutely nothing happened. One day protests are difficult, But TSA BLINKED!

Citizens participating in Opt Out Day were told that "The Safe and Legal Way for Airline Travelers to Protest TSA Scanner Radiation Is To Just "politely" Opt for the Pat Down. Don't make a fuss", so no one including media would know that they were protesting while in the screening line. They just made a choice not to be harmed by the radiation of the scanner.

It's dishonest and ridiculous for the far right to include this in their shrill litany of anti Obama tirades. The heavy handedness of TSA and Homeland Security agents began with the Bush administration. And, when the GOP dominated both houses. At that time they were actively trying to declare that anyone who would want to diminish the stringent security measures being employed were literally 'terrorist sympathizers'. They even tried to enshrine it in the PATRIOT ACT.
As WRPitt mentioned, the blatant cynical use of the current TSA public outrage for political gain by the GOP/teabaggers is all too clear. One or two years ago GOP politicians were clamouring over Obama's promise to close Guantanamo... they, declaring that only the GOP could keep the US safe. Now look at them, sabotaging the SALT Treaty, and whining about Obama's TSA. And they do so solely out of partisanship.
Buuuuut,.... the TSA's tactics ARE dangerous because they compel us to consider such indignities as justifiable. As if any erosion of our civil liberties could be rolled back once the 'eternal war' has ended.

USA PATRIOT ACT = remember THAT invasion of privacy and usurpation of rights? Remember all the "foreign" looking and sounding people who were rounded up, hounded, intimidated, with little howl or protest? Remember all the illegal wire tapping, all the lies and obfuscation that led to the Iraq invasion? Remember all the times Repugs vowed "this must never happen again" to justify repression, the raising of the threat levels, etc, etc, etc? And remember how all of it was, at least tacitly, endorsed by the Repugnican "leadership"?
Anyone who denies that the current hue and cry is other than politically and perhaps racially motivated should pull his/her head out of whatever crevice it is iin.

Being groped or irradiated doesn't interest me, so I either stay home or find alternate means of transport. Maybe if I ate a lot of beans and could master the art -- when I was in college I knew a guy who could -- of breaking wind precisely when the groper's face was ...

Nah. I'd rather stay home or find alternate transportation. OTOH ... hmmm.

EPIC FAIL!

You have pulled a strawmen argument brilliantly, Mr Pitt! The opposition to the TSA policies come from all sides. Would you like to check the comments at Huffington, Democratic Underground, Crooks and Liars, Truth Dig, Common Dreams and Think Progress? Really, just get on the internet, will you? This has nothing to do with the tea party clowns, Glenn Beck or any of that BS. Granted, they are in because they hate Obama. But this is something bigger you obviously have failed to grasp.

The security policies are reactive. The terrorists are always one step ahead. Because of the liquid bombs we now have to limit/expose all liquids. Because of the shoe bomber we now have to take off our shoes. Because of the underwear bomber, who got on an airplane in Europe (how effective, doesn't it?) we now have to go through scanners or groping. Have you realised there's no conclusive scientific evidence on the risk of using such scanners? Have you followed the lead that ends with politicians being lobbied by scanner manufacturers? Nothing to see there, right? After all, America is run by corporations. No news here. Just move along. Correct?

How about the fact these scanners can't detect what's inside a cavity? Still having warm feelings about security?

The next time a terrorist gets into a plane with a bomb inside his/her rectum then what, Mr Pitt? Colonoscopies for all? Seriously, where do you draw the line? How can you fail to see this is an issue of safety (false at that) versus freedom?

America is scared to death and most people keep going with sheep's herd mentality giving up freedoms for the delusion of security. Isn't that what the terrorists wanted?

Just google the chances of getting struck by lighting versus dying on an airplane for ANY cause and put your drivel in perspective!

You want to improve security? Stop blind support for Israel. Keep supporting, though. Just not so blind the puppet master's strings are obvious.

And guess what? You didn't have to mess up with your freedoms!

I haven't flown in eight years and have no need or desire to ever fly again. I've dropped out of the fast lane and am loving it. Problem solved here.

I'm glad I don't have to fly these days. There is no question in mind which side I'm on, and it's NOT on the side of the companies that are making money off of these machines or feeling people up.

The story about the person's colleague's child should be enough for folks. It is NOT safe to fly, and the reason is, for the most part, NOT because of foreign terrorists.

I, too, had my child taken from me by airport security -- BEFORE these measures were enacted (and post 9-11) -- WITHOUT my permission, and by the time I'd turned, there he was -- an elementary school youngster being publicly frisked down by an officer in public, while a blond family - the conventional father, bourgeoise mother, and two blond bourgeoise children went through next, untouched.

continued

continued

Needless to say, if I were accompanied by a male, and lighter, this would not have happened to us, at the hands of a rural honky at a rural airport, pissed off because I questioned what was happening to my luggage earlier in the boarding process, as if I were an American citizen with rights.

The Republicans were happy with things back then, and none of them had any complaints. The problem, now, however, is that EVERYONE is being searched, including THEM and their dear ones.

True, I have a sense of satisfaction imagining them getting their due comeuppance, and at the rubber gloved hands of an immigrant worker in a crowded urban airport ..

But this is fleeting, given the reality of what is really happening in America. (And something btw John Kerry has hundreds of thousands invested in, the way Sessenbrenner, after bringing in illegal labor then sunk hundreds of thousands into a useless fence.)

Fascism is here, everyone. (Anyone listening?)

Just because there are other things to worry about like the manufactured economic collapse doesn't mean people should just say fuck it and let the would be controllers take away more of our rights. Even if you don't fly I would think this issue should outrage every American who believes in the constitution because of the fact that the pat-downs, etc. violet the Fourth Amendment. Also I use to call myself part of the Tea Party but not anymore know that it has been taken over by the neo-cons but this website tends to blame everything on them and I think its a little ridiculous, you are falling right into their trap playing the fake left-right paradigm.

Here's how everyone should feel about it: If the system that issues visas worked properly, then the terrorists would not be traveling to this country. Instead, EVERY SINGLE AIRLINE TERRORIST has been issued a visa IN SPITE of being on watchlists up the freakin' wazoo. Yes, the 9/11 guys too. Oh, we've stopped some Muslim intellectuals by refusing visas, but not a single terrorist. So why are we being treated like criminals who have just been arrested and need frisking instead of the guys who ARE the criminals? Because the guy who helped Bush let New Orleans drown only to resurrect it as part of a private-sector take-over conspiracy is using this to line his pockets once again. Chertoff snaked oiled the TSA into spending taxpayer millions that CONGRESS REFUSED TO APPROVE for these machines, and those who refuse to use them are penalized by being abused in ways that would be illegal outside the airport except among consenting adults. The cancer issues and sexual assualt and boiled-frog power issues are another discussion, but if you want bare-bones dollars-and-sense reason to appreciate our outrage, there it is.

Here's how everyone should feel about it: If the system that issues visas worked properly, then the terrorists would not be traveling to this country. Instead, EVERY SINGLE AIRLINE TERRORIST has been issued a visa IN SPITE of being on watchlists up the freakin' wazoo. Yes, the 9/11 guys too. Oh, we've stopped some Muslim intellectuals by refusing visas, but not a single terrorist. So why are we being treated like criminals who have just been arrested (on a probable-cause warrant or because of imminent threat) and need frisking instead of the guys who ARE the criminals? Because the guy who helped Bush let New Orleans drown only to resurrect it as part of a private-sector take-over conspiracy is using this to line his pockets once again. Chertoff snaked oiled the TSA into spending taxpayer millions that CONGRESS REFUSED TO APPROVE for these machines (the insubordinate TSA and Napalitano ignored the will of the PEOPLE), and those who refuse to use them are penalized by being abused in ways that would be illegal outside the airport except among consenting adults in order to ensure that millionaires make more millions off the taxpayer, finding YET ANOTHER WAY TO EXPLOIT everyone who isn't a millionaire. The cancer rates that will spike next year and sexual assualt and boiled-frog power issues are another discussion, but if you want bare-bones dollars-and-sense reason to appreciate genuine and realistic outrage, there it is. You don't have to be left or right to be sick of this exploitation and ongoing evisceration of the Fourth Amendment.

Oh, dear. I understand the ambivalence, but really! Deciding that this is not a valid issue just because the Right has agreed that it is an issue is disappointingly reactionary and not what I had hoped for from W.R.Pitt. It IS an issue. These procedures violate at our social norms, create a police state mentality around travel, and train the citizenry to accept endless incremental loss of personal and civil rights on which this country was founded. Yes, unemployment, hunger and homelessness are more urgent to more people. That doesn't mean this issue doesn't count, or shouldn't count.
Winter

Disagree completely Mr. Pitt. This is just further along the slippery slope to a police state/oligarchy/dictatorship, call it what you will.

The terrorists are winning because we are scared sh_tless of them and have changed the way we live, the way we travel and how we govern because of them. They still hate us, and they still will conger up other terrorists plots. If we want that to stop we have to jettison our empire-building warmongering attitude and stay the heck out of their countries.

Then maybe we can fly without having our health compromised or our privacy violated by so called security measures.

I usually agree with William Rivers Pitt, but, and yes, The only reason the Republicans are jumping on this is to trash Obama HOWEVER, I have come to the conclusion that Obama is the third Bush term. We are still in Iraq, We are still in Afganistan, 911 has not been investigated, We still consider the Geneva Convention as a suggestion, We seem to be more interested in chasing whistle blowers than the crimes and malfeasance they were blowing the whistle on, The health care reform essentially criminalizes the crappy corporate system which is basically designed to DENY CARE and maximize the casino rake off.

Yes I voted for Obama and probably will do so again BUT to me he looks like a total capitulation to the same forces that Bush was working for.

I am for a genuine populism, and I appreciate the status quo being harassed from either side.

Considering that the 911 investigation was a stage managed coverup, and considering that Operation Northwoods , The Gulf of Tonkin Incident, and possbily 911, were False Flag operations, then I don't really understand what terrorists we are trying to defend ourselves against.

Terrorism industries are good business. You can get rich trading on fear.

err.. freedom for security.

...Even though history is repeating right before the very eyes of "Americans" today, they refuse to face it, and they fall right into the government trap of decrying all those who do face it, who are trying their darnedest to fulfill their duty(ies) to warn everyone that it's happening, and to get every True American to stand up against it before it's too late, if it isn't already too late.

Those who speak the loudest against these truths, and against those who speak them, won't be satisfied until all of the truthtellers are taken away and never heard from again, just as in Germany. They believe it supposedly won't happen, just as most Germans believed as well; and no amount of warning them, appealing to their "reason", trying to get them to wake up---as many of those in Germany tried to do, and who were as a result "disappeared" and never heard from again---will get them to see what's really happening until it's FAR too late.

Even the "William Rivers Pitts", who used to tell it completely like it is about the threats of overreaching government, "Richard Lichtmans", and "Michael Winships", etc., of this country are falling for it, and defending that some sort of so-called balance must supposedly be found between destroying our Constitution and preserving it, which is a complete impossibility.

Why do they do this? Because they don't want to be called those who are supposedly aiding the "terrorists"; because they want to protect and save their own hides, and the hides of their families, whether they're conscious of it or not, from the "Fourth Reich" corporate-fascist scourge that is sweeping and taking over the U.S.; and because, whatever it takes, they too want some illusory "security", even at the expense of our liberties and freedoms bought at the cost of so many extremely courageous and heroic lives...

A truly pathetic piece of journalism. Mr. Pitt would do well to actually do some research on the scanners and the 'terrorist' threats he discusses. Mr. Pitt does do a masterful job of conflating issues. Truth Out can do far better than this.

My donation to Truthout was a mistake I will not repeat.
Pitt burned a bridge with this pile of crapola.

Since we already know the general description of 99% of the perpetrators why are we not concentrating our efforts on them?

BOLO & ATL 19 t0 35 YO middle eastern looking male suspects attempting to do harm to our transportation infrastructure.

Problem with that? TT the hand.

Hey Achmed, step out of line there would ya?

If I were to ask what has been found in the years of searching we have endured, I'll bet that information would be classified. So I say nothing has been found. It's all useless CYA crap and I am secure that I would never be proved wrong.

Mr. Pitt is engaging in a common fallacy known as "ad hominem".

The truth of a group's particular statements cannot necessarily be measured by the quality of their other opinions.

Is this guy snookie stupid or what? Read the constitution! If you are worried about getting blown up in an airplane, then don't travel. Don't get out of bed,you might trip and fall! Read Webster Tarpley's book on Synthetic Terrorism! Start thinking for yourself, and if that's too difficult then get on the VIEW and join the rest of the jabbering brainless no-nothings!

Is everyone forgetting that we did not commit any crime? We did not destroy the World Trade Center, especially the highly questionable Building Number 7. We did not attack our own nation. We are not terrorists. We do not deserve our underwear searched because of the also highly questionable "Underwear Bomber."

No one could have pulled off these acts except those in power. Search them, and them alone. Leave us to a nation free of their tyranny, and also free of the tyranny of Right and Left opinions.

This long winded article seemed to me like a long winded discussion whether or not water boarding is torture.
The TSA is nuts to think that they can catch a terrorist grandmother going through their obstacle course. It is useless and demeaning and reminds me of the German soldiers guiding their "customers" into the gas chambers.
So if the motivated troublemakers fill their teeth with explosive or swallow it in condoms - what torture for all of us comes next?
The only answer is to stop creating more terrorists by not terrorizing the world.

I guess writers can be naive' but should check all sources available. The whole TSA thing is reputed to be an operation of Mr. Chertoff, who reportedly had these machines and contracts in the making or already in place BEFORE the "underwear bomber" incident took place. At least, this is what I have read. If so, this is another plot on the part of the government and certain agencies who stand to gain financially, as well as more massive control and "conditioning" of Americans for what is to come. Which means more invasion of our privacy and erosion of our rights. Our Constitution means nothing any longer, as it has been "mis-read", misconstrued, manipulated to suit certain parties, corporations, etc. for the profit of a select few who have the most money and control our government and our leaders, and consequently CONTROL US.

On one poster's daughter's tampax (as the subject of government investigation), I have to add that, this has been the case at the border for some time, now. Crossing back into the United States from Canada, many years ago, on a Greyhound Bus, we were stopped by U.S. border officials who humiliated any number of the passengers while detaining our group, as we watched, aghast, at their searching of every day citizens' belongings -- including one young man who happened to be carrying (for who knows what reason?) a box of tampax in his backpack. Maybe he was picking it up for his girlfriend before heading home to the nearest U.S. border town?
continued

You know, it's articles like this that urge us to be Good Little Sheeple and go along w/the rape of our Precious Civil Liberties (which started under *Bush*, and Obama promised to end - thus abandoning yet another campaign promise, for those of you who wondered why the Dems lost the House!) that are why I gave up on BuzzFlash originally, and haven't bothered to support "Truthout"....

I must say that I am so pleased to read the many posts here decrying the absurd, and artificial, left/right dichotomy that is ruining the discourse in our beloved nation. The fact that this dichotomy is relentlessly pushed by politicians and their media lapdogs is enough to dissuade me from thinking along those lines. And while I hate flying and all the indignities that go with it, I will be ever so grateful to the TSA if they help catalyze our rejection of the left/right political dichotomy- a classic version of divide and conquer.

We must reach out to one another across political divides if we are to survive and prosper as a nation. Those who would destroy us, label us- thus usurping our power to define ourselves, and make common cause for the common good. We are all conservative in some ways, liberal in others. Let us liberally love one another, and conservatively care for our planet.

Thank you all so much for this incredible set of posts! It has been a rough couple of weeks for me, and reading them has really lifted my spirits.

"Anonymous @ Sat, 11/27/2010 - 06:34", giving up the rights of others, especially minorities, and/or carrying out racism and racial profiling, is NOT the answer. But, you're obviously a racist, so you're defending such an indefensible and unconscionable position is not at all surprising, but please stop being racist and promoting more madness and mass-insanity...

I am amazed at the complete lack of discussion regarding how these machines came to be at our airports. I was out of the country when I read one story that indicated that these machines were approved by people at the TSA during the Bush administration who are now making a pretty penny by the sale of these machines to the government. Could we have a little more coverage of that?

Sometimes, not often, but sometimes, the right is right and the commentators on the left have left their common sense behind. I'm glad that many commenters are trying to get TruthOut back on track on this issue.

This type of security is all about building a bigger bureaucracy at the expense of our rights and has nothing to do with security. The underwear bomber was handed to officials by his father on a platter and this essential intelligence was ignored. By ignoring him officials created a multi-million dollar economic opportunity both for the (probably far-right) businessmen who are the true parasites on this issue and for the empire builders within the government (who will probably end up with cushy jobs in business after their stint in government).

Pitt is spot on. The two-year-old mentality of the right - (imagine a little child's voice) "No", "No", "No" - is laughable to anyone with even half a brain. How do these clowns keep getting elected? Oh, that's right - many of these clowns are paid media "entertainers". Connecting the No-Bird dots to START and unemployment benefits is profoundly appropriate in this commentary.

Service ceiling of 727 is 36,100 feet.

You would be hard pressed to find a 727 in US where you would have to go through TSA security to get on it.

Not everyone who spews out some numbers knows what he is talking about. Apparently.

Dogs! use Dogs!
For heavens sake must we always attempt the most complicated/expensive/liberty depriving solution?

Whoever is screaming about using dogs remember that the perpetually offended Religion of Peace consider dogs to be unclean and would be offended again....

Hey maybe in a round about way you're on to something. Dogs and maybe those truffle snuffling pigs too. Might at least keep some of the trouble makers away from the airports.

Expect the Christmas Tree bomber incident - the Somali kid - to be a dud, set up by Feds. This is the moment when people get bored with being scared, and when the requisite cattle prod event triggers an unexpected response from a public who recognizes the fraud, finally - widespread civil disobedience.

It's so funny to see right-wingers get so mad about this when they completely supported every invasion of privacy and inconvenience enacted while Bush was the president. In fact, they called people on the left unpatriotic for questioning invasions of privacy or weakening of civil liberties.

Now, all of a sudden, they get all upset about the next step in a process that started almost 10 years ago. What is the difference? Obama is president now instead of Bush. That’s the ONLY difference!

Actually, there is another difference. The same pat-downs have been going on for years, with no protest from the right, but they were reserved for people who "look like a terrorist" or who were on a list of people to harass. Now that it applies to EVERYONE who refuses to go through the new scanners, suddenly it's a terrible thing to do.

Don't you right-wing people see how utterly hypocritical and selfish you are? Liberals who are against this have been against similar invasions of privacy all along, whether it was targeted at them personally or not, whether a Republican or Democrat was in charge.

Here is the difference: Liberals have real values, while for right-wingers, it all boils down to us against them and what about me me me. Make Obama fail, no matter how much damage it does to the country. Make the rich richer no matter how much it hurts the economy. Screw the minorities and the poor, but not me. Screw life on earth so I can drive my gas guzzling vehicle and fly whenever I feel like it.

On the right, this seems to be about getting rid of TSA as a governmental agency, and replacing it with a private contractor (think Blackwater), as the current Homeland Security statutes allow, and as has been done already in some smaller airports. On the left, at least from where I sit, the objections are about unnecessary intrusion into personal liberty with no evidence (none, really) that the additional measures are in any way effective, or will actually make anyone safer.

Why the TSA pat-downs and body scans are unconstitutional

Jeffrey Rosen
Washington Post
Nov 27, 2010

prisonplanet.com/why-the-tsa-pat-downs-and-body-scans-are-unconstitutional.html

end the TSA, HLS, DEA, ATF etc etc... just how many federal policing agencies do we need anyways?... they can only justify their existence if they can get the arrests and convictions to prove their worth... is this how and why America became the most incarcerated nation in the world?

Damn, am I tired of people calling intelligent people children; of people being patronizing and/or condescending; of people attacking the majority who see through and give intelligent, well-reasoned responses to all of the unreasonable and unconstitutional "security" measures being taken more and more by "our" government, and of those who defend them; and of people who just don't get it, and who refuse to get it.

The U.S. has already been well-headed down the slippery slope for a long time now, and it is getting worse and worse every day! From the so-called "U.S.A. P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act", the "Homeland Security Act" (creating the Department of Homeland Security in the first place, that should not exist except in police-state countries like China, the former USSR, East Germany, and Nazi Germany), the "Military Commissions Act", the "John Warner National Defense Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2007", the creation of TSA in the first place, the instituting of the full-body scans of everyone, the pat-downs of everyone who opts out of the scans, and many other things, the U.S. has been turned into more and more of a police state where everyone is presumed guilty until they prove their innocence! What is so hard to "get" about all of this, and why to we have to keep trying to reason with so-called "Americans" who still can't see where all of this has already headed, and where all of it is heading more and more every day?! But "I guess" they won't get it until it is far too late and the U.S. is another, full-fledged Nazi Germany! That is NOT hyperbole; but, of course, they will probably continue to falsely believe, and continue to fraudulently claim, that it supposedly is until, like I said, it's far too late!...

Mr. Pitt, I have admired many of your writings in the past, but you are in error with this article.

So the far right is taking this opportunity to bash the TSA, in an effort to make Obama look bad? That is not surprising, but it does not change the facts of the situation:

1) Context: we have undergone a decade of fear-mongering on the part of the government, for the purpose of scaring Americans into accepting unnecessary wars and the loss of our civil liberties.

2) The security establishment is still up to the same old tricks, hyping underwear bombs that don't work and plots invented by FBI informants as "terrorism".

3) The purpose of 2) is the same as ever, to persuade us to fall in behind government policy that we would other wise not accept, while continuing the loss of our civil liberties.

Yeah, so some Republicans are also upset about being searched as if they were county prisoners, just to get on an airplane. That does not mean it's not a disgrace, and that NO ONE should have to put up with that kind of treatment, just to travel about the country.

Think about it.

So disappointing. I refuse to stand aside while my countrymen and women are abused for a lie.

BBBBBAAAAAAAaaaaa, BBBBBBAAAAAaaaaa.

continued

As for non-sexual touching, none of these airport employees have been screened for criminal backgrounds regarding sexual offenses, including pedophilia! A doctor's office? Your comparison is ludicrous! People CHOOSE to go into a doctor's office, it is a PRIVATE relationship, and doctors are LICENSED PROFESSIONALS.

You might as well be felt up by a cashier at your local grocery outlet - I really like the cashiers at Trader Joe's, for example - but that SURE AS HELL doesn't mean they're qualified to run their hands and fingers over my breasts, my vagina, my penis, my testacles, my buttocks, OR MY CHILD'S MISTER.

If a "terrorist" surgically inserted a plastic shell encasing C-4 into their abdomen and blew up a plane would TSA now "have" to cut every flyer open and check for C-4? Of course not.
These "enhanced pat-downs" are no different.

It's crossing the line between "safety" and straying into absurdity. Now that these so called "terrorists" know they have to get Pat downs, do you really think they'll take a bomb in their underwear again? No

if they really want to blow up a plane they'll keep taking up more extreme measures until it will be impossible to tell bomber from citizen without slicing into everyones flesh.

If you really want to solve this problem you have to look at the root cause and not just treat the symptoms. WHY do the bombers want to blow up planes? NO one up in our political hierarchy has asked this question yet, even though it's the most important question and the FIRST question that should be asked before trying to solve ANY problem.

All those who find this porn action on it's flying citizens justified and cannot speak out against these 1984 policies, I submit to you... will you allow full cavity searches once a crazy stuffs the C4 up their arse? Or now that it is a situation where hundreds upon hundreds are forced into these cattle lines funneling down and ever closer together creating an ideal situation for mass effect detonates it right there, will you stop flying? Crazies do what crazies do... to give your personal liberties of undue search and the protections within your person does nothing to stop crazy. It only erodes our liberties that you will never get back and gives those crazies another point in the win column.

This is the last article I will ever read from Truthout (sic) and, needless to say, I will stop contributing to this spineless blog for progressive wimps. Mr. Pitt accepts unwanted sexual contact and assault, which is what the TSA is doing, as being "reasonable" because it is the job of the State to interpret the "reasonableness" provision of the -4th Amendment! Horsehockey!

Common folks, have any of you seen the screen shots of from these machines? Every person in them looks like a blob of goo. Its not porn or indecent. Just a blob of goo.

Hurray for "DonDeGeorge"! You got "WolfBritain" to go into one of his bully tirades, so you must be saying something right!

I couldn't disagree with you more, William. You have totally missed the point about the Fourth Amendment infringement and the terrible precedent of allowing warrantless blanket searches of everyone within a premises. We're back to the old British Writs of Assistance that were supposed to be completely gone based on our Bill of Rights. This is Franklin's comment about losing the republic because we're not courageous enough to keep it. I suspect this is all about support for Obama, but it's more important to support the republic than one president.

The comments claiming the low "odds" of being killed by a terrorist in an airplane ---so we don't need to worry---- is the most ridiculous BS I've seen. There are no "odds." If you took away airport screening, terrorists would be on the next plane. Even with the TSA, when the next airplane is blown up, these same people will be up in arms because the government didn't do to enough to protect them!!!
Give it up folks!

Excuse me, apostrophe in the wrong place: ...Joseph Goebbels'...

Intentional social engineering at its worst. Government message: Submit to total tyranny or else. It starts out as "simply" humiliating people ("soft fascism"); making them feel hopeless (Obama's so-called "Hope"---Orwellian, "the-reverse-is-actually-true", kind of language; aka "double-speak"); and getting them to feel powerless (Obama's so-called "Change"), to voluntarily surrender their rights and freedoms, to give up trying to stand up for their rights and freedoms, and to give in and bow down to the corporate-fascist totalitarian police state completely.

They are sending the message, you resist tyranny and you will be punished, with "slight" punishment at first, and then it will be ratcheted up a little bit more, a little bit more somemore, and so on, until no resistance whatsoever will be tolerated at all. So much for the "land of the free, and the home of the brave", now become "the land of (slaves), and the home of the (cowards)":

Mother Kept In “Glass Cage” For Almost An Hour By TSA For Resisting Over Breast Milk

Steve Watson, M.A.
PrisonPlanent.com
InfoWars.net
November 30, 2010

prisonplanet.com/mother-kept-in-glass-cage-for-almost-an-hour-by-tsa-for-resisting-over-breast-milk.html

Do you now see what's going, and do you now realize that it IS happening? God help us all if we don't completely put an end to all of this madness!

Based on recent comments to several TruthOut articles, I'd say "WolfBritain" must be the most paranoid, irrational, obsessive commentator I've seen. Apparently, a believer in (and promoter of) the "World Order" conspiracy hoax. I'm all for free speech, even for the guy on the corner soap box wearing the aluminum hat to receive messages from Outer Space -- but frankly it gets tiresome to see these tirades and ad hominem attacks constantly showing up here. My advice -- seek help!

...Yet, again, one can't tell the avoiders and deniers the truth; or, one can try, but it's a waste of time ninety-nine times out of a hundred; for they will keep living a lie, and/or series of lies, in their lives, and believing that "everything will work out for the best", even when everything begins to crash down all around them. Actually, it already began with 9/11 and the creation of the many subsequent draconian, unconstitutional "laws" eviscerating our liberty(ies) and freedom(s) in the name of a "national 'security'" dictatorial police state. Hell, most "Americans" are so blind and ignorant of what's really going on, plain as day right in front of their noses, that they actually accept that this country is no longer run by "the People", and are actually happy to have the state dictate greater and greater controls over them...

...No, because it is my duty, I will probably not give up on people; and, yes, I will probably continue to try and wake people up to what's really going on, and to take a stand against the deluge of evil in the guise of "good"; even though most of them will never do anything but take the coward's way out, and really believe that doing so, and betraying God, the world, this country, the U.S. Constitution, and their fellow-humankind in the process, is supposedly the "good" and "right" way to go, like the completely-subjugated and enslaved people they have already become. For, when the enslaved and subjugated have all of the outward trappings of "freedom" and "liberty" so-called, why would they, for True Goodness, Self-Governance and Liberty, want to jeopardize their false "liberty" and "freedom", and incur the wrath of their masters? They would rather die as subjugated slaves.