From Denny: Like a lot of you my first impression of these TSA Pat Downs was that they were a general frisking to check for obvious hidden non-metallic weapons or substances that could later be combined to be used as a bomb. But did any of us really think our own government would resort to deep-fingered genital probes? Come on. It's bad enough when your doctor does it but at least it's in private.
Talk about the latest national conversation about just how paranoid we will go to avoid terrorism. This is ridiculous. Now we are becoming a paranoid nation while the terrorists are laughing in their sleeves. They are probably holding conventions in the caves of Afghanistan right now, cheering how they have succeeded into terrorizing everyday Americans and the government.
The reality of current terrorism is our military has done a great job of reducing their numbers. We keep thousands of troops in Afghanistan just to chase down the last remaining 150 Taliban. What a joke. We spend $2 billion a week to chase 150 guys. Another insanity.
It's obvious our government and other world governments have done an effective job of shutting down the terrorism financial network. Why else would they be sending cruder and simpler homemade bombs these days, a real departure from earlier years? These guys are running out of money and people crazy enough to join them. The past decade has taken quite a toll on the terrorism network as world governments have gotten smarter and more effective of how to deal with them appropriately.
What is more annoying is our government's arrogant police state attitude toward the traveling public. I had hoped we left that behind with the Bush administration. People do not like to have their civil rights violated. Americans do not like to be subjected to unreasonable search and seizure without a warrant or reasonable suspicion.
Americans definitely own a zone of personal privacy and don't want to be molested physically. How do parents explain to their children why the stranger is caressing and feeling off their genital area when the parent had previously taught this was unacceptable for anyone to do to them? Besides, how many TSA Agents really enjoy going to work every day, knowing that they must feel up the general public all day long? Geeez! What an ugly demeaning job!
Keep this up and people are going to make the same decision I have: time to go back to traveling by car. Initially, to avoid the radiation of the scanners I was willing to be subjected to the TSA Pat Down - until the stories of the reality of these Pat Downs came out. Forget it. Want me to come visit? See ya in a few days. Look for me to be driving up in your driveway, not flying into your nearest airport.
When asked on Face The Nation, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said she would not subject herself to a TSA Pat Down. You see, that's just the point. The people who put this procedure in place are not themselves subject to it when they fly. Not the President, the Vice President, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Homeland Security, the head of the TSA, John Pistole, and on the list goes. I'll bet President Obama does not subject his girls to this TSA Pat Down - and if he did I'd probably reach through this computer and smack him.
Oh, and remember when we all heard the President's sincere moment when he promised the TSA images would never be released to the public? I'm sure he meant it. The problem is that he can't cover for the thousands of employees who intentionally release those images - or those situations that are just plain ordinary screw-ups. After all, in the airports alone there are two million people screened per day. That doesn't begin to account for the thousands who have their naked images scanned when entering federal court houses. Well, some of those images have already leaked out. These are the 100 images not supposed to be saved or released by U. S. Marshalls from a Federal Florida courthouse - all 35,000 images are now up on the web. Just go to that link.
The outrage over these invasive scans of our genitals has created a site: MyTSAHorrorStory.com. I just went there. Guess what? You guessed it. Their server is over capacity. Something is definitely wrong in America when a site gets millions of hits over an airport pat down.
Here's a Mommy Blogger, Erin Chase, who relates her experience with a TSA airport security groping when she refused to go through the scanner. She was instructed to go through the TSA Pat Down since she refused the scanner. This is her story. She was definitely not happy about it. It's a shame that to protect your health you have to subject yourself to a public sexual groping at an airport.
