The People, Revolting

After I wrote my prior post on the TSA's offensive new procedures, I saw where others had weighed in on the topic. Herewith, a small selection — a trio — of representative comments:

• Scott Johnson at Powerline:
  “The TSA is bound by a form of political correctness that has long rendered it a joke. With its newly implemented scanning and patdown procedures, however, the TSA has become something worse than a joke. It has become intrusive and humiliating to a degree that is difficult to accept.” ... “In its absurd intrusiveness and glaring incompetence, the TSA has become a perfect metaphor for the Obama administration. Thus the revolt.”

  
  

• Charles Krauthammer in the Washington Post:
  “The junk man’s revolt marks the point at which a docile public declares that it will tolerate only so much idiocy.”

  
  

• Security and terrorism expert Bruce Schneier, on the TSA Scans:
  “Q: Is this security theater?
  “A: 100 percent. It won't catch anybody.”

Meanwhile, the TSA response is to up the ante:

“The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is warning that any would-be commercial airline passenger who enters an airport checkpoint and then refuses to undergo the method of inspection designated by TSA will not be allowed to fly and also will not be permitted to simply leave the airport.” (emphasis in the original)

Nor was this an idle threat. There has already been a man arrested and marched through two separate airport terminals in handcuffs and underwear by TSA thugs. His crime: He demonstrated that TSA was only interested in its defined process and not in results. He stripped down to his underwear, which “left nothing to the imagination,” so TSA could verify nothing illegal was being carried without him having to be groped. “But that wasn’t enough for the TSA supervisor who was called to the scene and asked me to put my clothes on so I could be properly patted down.” In other words, TSA insisted on coercing him into submitting to a sexual assault (which TSA pretends isn't a sexual assault because it's being done in an airport by the government). In this and its other actions (like strip searches of children), TSA has demonstrated it's just a bureaucracy of thugs.

And our Dear Leader is less than sympathetic:

“Barack Obama admitted today during his NATO Question and Answer session that he does not worry about the TSA gropings because he does not fly commercial. (Thank you for enlightening us on that, Mr. President. We almost forgot your were the Commander in Chief.) But, he added that he had no problem with ordinary Americans getting groped by TSA agents at airports.”

Obama's comments produced some interesting responses on that posting:

• Always the false choices with this chump. Sure, build a coal plant, if you want, but you’ll go bankrupt. Sure, go ahead and opt out of government-healthcare, you’ll be fined. Want to fly? Sure, get sexually assaulted. Typical fascist bs from a typical fascist loser. I’m not accepting this “conditioning” for a totalitarian police state. Period.

  
  

• It’s better that a million innocent children get groped than one Muslim extremist get profiled. It’s in the Consitution! Somewhere…

  
  

• Has the nation gone bat sh** crazy? Where are all of the leftards who were screaming about losing constitutional rights during the Bush administration over the Patriot Act? Where are they? Do absolutely none of them fly or are they all closet gropers or exhibitionists and voyeurs?

  
  

• As far as the TSA having the authority to do this, well they have the same authority to do it as the EPA has to refuse to give operating permits to 80% of the oil refineries. All of this over reaching from the executive into the private lives and private businesses to keep the masses in line.

  
  

• You Know How to Combat the march to 1984? ………. 1776 !!!

I'm with Scott Johnson, Charles Krauthammer, and Bruce Schneier. These new TSA policies and procedures are political “security theater”, completely worthless in providing any actual security. The public “will tolerate only so much idiocy.” “Thus the revolt.”

The only solution is to disband the Transportation Security Agency and turn their responsibilities over to someone who at least has some concept of what the responsibility entails.