Don’t want to go through the TSA’s full body scan or porn-o-scan? The TSA has an alternative: “enhanced” pat-downs. These pat-downs gropings have one objective – coerce you into going through the body scanner.
T-shirts with the logo on the left are available here.
If a significant number of passengers choose to opt-out of the body scanners, the time required to do a normal pat-down would cause such delays that travelers would find alternatives to flying. The airlines would raise hell. To prevent this, the TSA has resorted to the terror tactic of “enhanced” pat-downs.
There is big money at stake here. Former DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff actively lobbies for the scanner manufacturer Rapiscan via his firm the Chertoff Group. Each unit has a price tag of $25 million and the Obama administration has provided $1 billion in stimulus money for the purchase of scanners.
The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) has filed a petition for review and motion for an emergency stay with District of Columbia Court of Appeals. EPIC said that the program is “unlawful, invasive, and ineffective.” With this much money at stake, the Fourth Amendment doesn’t stand a chance.
I expect members of Congress to act outraged, hold hearings wherein they act outraged, and then do nothing. Politicians will use this opportunity to get their sound bites on the evening news, then something else will come along and distract us.
If you decide to go the “enhanced” pat-down route, you could pull a Meg Ryan:
Bdaman,
Yes, I agree. Good points. (OK, now I really, really have to get to work.)
Anon Nurse I second that and it is a shame he was used. I would not put it past that what they did to him was two fold. There may have been a fear he would run for president and this was a way to discredit him and achieve going to war with Iraq.
Ok that’s great, very enlightening. Answer, put more troops, Guards, Border Agents Ice officials anything you want to call them on the Canadian border as well. P.S. and have the mounties do the same on their side. Zero Tolerance
Mo,
Now I really do have to get to work… 🙂
That’s right troll. Insert a premise clearly not in my argument.
As to Canada crossings?
From The Wrong Place to Stop Terrorists By Peter Beinart
“Rarely have the two parties been so united in a belief that is so wrong. Stopping terrorists from coming across America’s southern border would be an urgent concern — if any were actually coming. So far, however, there is little evidence they are. Using newspaper reports and government documents, Robert S. Leiken and Steven Brooke of the Nixon Center have painstakingly compiled a database of 373 known or suspected terrorists in North America or Western Europe since 1993. In a forthcoming essay in the journal Terrorism and Political Violence, they disclose their findings: Not one terrorist has entered the United States from Mexico. And they’re not the only ones who have reached that conclusion. As a recent paper published by Syracuse University’s Institute for National Security and Counterterrorism notes, “it does not appear that authorities have apprehended even a single terrorist trying to cross over the southern border into the United States.”
Immigration scaremongers like to note that more than 150,000 OTMs — “other than Mexicans” — were caught crossing the southern border in fiscal 2005. What they generally don’t say is that the vast majority of them — as much as 99 percent — come from other Latin American countries. The number hailing from “countries of interest,” i.e., Islamic countries that produce a lot of terrorists, is in the hundreds, if not the tens.
Does that mean it’s impossible for a terrorist to enter the United States from Mexico? Of course not. But consider the odds. The United State posts more than five agents per mile across our southern border. By contrast, we post less than one agent every five miles across our northern border. What’s more, as the United States has cut off urban crossing points in places such as El Paso and San Diego, it has forced many illegal immigrants to go through the Arizona desert — a brutal journey, particularly for someone with no knowledge of the terrain. Would-be terrorists coming from Canada are not only less likely to be caught, they are less likely to die along the way.
There also happen to be many more potential jihadists in Canada. Unlike Mexico, with its negligible Arab and Muslim population, Canada in recent decades has welcomed large numbers of immigrants from the Middle East. And while the vast majority are law-abiding, Canadian authorities estimate that roughly 50 terrorist groups operate in the country. In their study, Leiken and Brooke identify three suspected terrorists who have tried to enter the United states from Canada, including Ahmed Ressam, an Algerian native arrested in December 1999 on his way to blow up Los Angeles International Airport.
On national security grounds, then, if America wants to build a wall along one of our borders, it should be our border to the north. More practically, the best way to prevent terrorists from entering the United States, according to experts such as Richard Falkenrath, a Brookings Institution scholar and former deputy homeland security adviser, would be to invest in a state-of-the-art terrorist watch list complete with biometric screening. After all, terrorists are most likely to enter the United States the same way the Sept. 11 hijackers did — through airports.”
______
Airports now “protected” with theatrics and Constitutional abuse, not actual practical security that accomplishes anything of value in combating potential terrorist attacks.
Bdaman,
Colin Powell,IMO, is a good and honorable man. I’ve heard that his wife doesn’t want him to run, and who could blame her… May be just be a rumor.
Your right, don’t even bother to try and deter anyone to cross illegally. It won’t work, they’re just gonna come anyway. It’s not a problem.
“If national security was your true interest, you should be more concerned about the many many more miles of unmonitored Canadian and ocean borders compared to the Mexican border. If you build a wall or set up troops, people will simply circumvent them. Just like they do now.”
unmonitored Canadian and ocean borders
Last time I checked there wasn’t alot of people coming across the Canadian Border although I suspect there are a few.
The last time I checked there wasn’t a freedom flotilla descending from the oceans and besides we have the Coast Guard and the Navy for that. Maybe you don’t remember all the Cubans and Haitians trying to get here.
Anon Nurse thats why I would like to see him run. He was used. It was totally unfair to him. This is what IMO has kept him from running. Had it not been for this I think he would be president now instead of Obama. I also think if he would run, it would give him the chance to defend himself and be honest with the American People and tell us EXACTLY what happened instead of his protectionism of the Bush administration.
As we’ve seen on the other thread, being duped is not confined to a single person or administration.
To expect the outcome of perfection is to both live in perpetual disappointment and a staggering display of mathematical ignorance. Your “national security” argument is simply facile and thinly veiled anti-Latino bigotry. If national security was your true interest, you should be more concerned about the many many more miles of unmonitored Canadian and ocean borders compared to the Mexican border. If you build a wall or set up troops, people will simply circumvent them. Just like they do now.
And it could also be said this way.
If you don’t strive for protection you will never have the opportunity to achieve protection.
Used to be in this Country that you never bothered to lock the front door. I bet you check yours twice.
“I would really like to see Colin Powell run.” (Bdaman)
Ray McGovern: How Colin Powell Got Duped by the CIA
May 19, 2009 …
http://www.counterpunch.org/mcgovern05192009.html
I don’t think that he would be “duped” again, that’s for sure. Or at least he’d be more cautious. He was certainly right in warning us to guard against the rise of “the terror industrial complex.”
I doubt that he could be convinced to run, but would be a formidable candidate, IMO.
I’ll only study half way so I can ace the test.
And if you don’t strive for perfection you will never have the opportunity to achieve perfection.
badtroll,
You are again seeking a perfect solution where none exists.
Swarthmore mom
ROTFLMAO out of respect I’ll bite my tongue.
Palioliberal Troll They put up a few black tea party candidates just like they put up Alvin Green. It was such a republican year that one won.
LTC West is crazy. He beat Ron Klein.
And why is that. I guess T partiers are racist looking at the number of blacks elected.
Swarthmore Mom:
I thought there werent any blacks in the tea party and now you are telling me one is in congress? How the hell is that possible?
Oh my god the earth is going to implode a black man a tea partier no less and a congressman. Has my liberal world frozen over?
Lets just hope he isn’t one of them there conservative rascals. That way I can keep some of my sanity.
The best way to lower the rate
Oh so you just want to lower the rate. It’s ok if some get across?
I guess you don’t have a zero tolerance as I do. The problem is not just Mexico there are many from Central and South America as other countries coming here illegally. You want Mexico to fix the problem ? Thats how you do it. And you think my idea is stupid.
You really don’t read much above a 4th grade level, do you?
Is this another way of telling me I’m stupid Drill Sar-Gent