John, Responding to fear of attack versus erosion of our rights is not a happy place.  There’s a good article at

http://boardingarea.com/blogs/flyingwithfish/2010/11/20/how-the-tsa-legally-circumvents-the-fourth-amendment/

that explains how TSA gets around the 4th amendment.  The 9th Circuit Court basically said you can be denied taking a flight if you won’t comply with airport security rules and it became law. 

I know at least one person flying this weekend who refuses to go through the scanner due to medical concerns.  And there’s a growing concern from the medical community about the medical safety of both the scanners and the pat-down procedures. Rock and a hard place, not so?

Frankly, TSA and the minds behind it appear to have deemed the American public to be hostile combatants.  That’s the only explanation I can arrive at for the new draconian procedures and lack of care of the safety AND health of our citizens and travelers.

The terrorists are winning this round so far.

It’s all about training people how to behave in a police state.

I suspect that’s part of what these occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan are about, too - training military personnel in techniques of control of populations.

The terrorists aren’t winning - it’s the people who brought us the “war in terror”, the “war on drugs”, and other wars on a free people who are winning.

But they only win so long as their controlled media manages to fool enough people. Or they manage to imprison all dissenters. One in eighteen men in America is already either in jail or under compulsory supervision (here’s a link to this and other shocking statistics: http://thecheesegrater.co.uk/infographic-prison/ ). Why not imprison one in ten? One in five? The beauty of this is that prisons are paid for with public money, and increasingly, profit private interests. Oligarchs approve!

If I were an airline CEO, I’d be very worried about this. The intention of the federal government seems to be to discourage people from flying. At least, the effect is to do this. If I have a reasonable choice I will not fly and subject myself to this kind of intrusion, which is so poorly conceived and worse, administered frequently with the kind of abuse of authority this poor woman was subjected to.

Good for her for exposing unjust authority and standing up when it would have been so much easier to meekly submit.

Incidentally, why is every TSA person in the video obese?

I wish that people would stop complaining about being given the choice between scans and frisking. This is not a violation of your rights. There are people being confined without any legal recourse by the federal government. There are people being held captive without any way to challenge their accusers. Indefinite detention needs to end. It is that violation that people should complain about, not about missing a fucking plane!

Aaron, just because larger issues exist is no reason to ignore lesser issues.  Why should we complain about illegal detentions when others are being held in secret prisons and being tortured?  Or being slowly killed by pollution.  All issues are fair to discuss.

If you want to write a guest article about the more serious illegal detentions, then I would be very open to posting it.

In the mean time, I am posting a link to a Washington Post article today about the probably unconstitutional nature of these scanners.