Of course, I also don't agree with random checkpoints that look for drunk drivers or ramdom pee testing without probable cause.
"Constitution?" "Constitution?!?!" "We don' need no stinkin' Constitution!"
Posted on 06/21/2011 7:13:02 PM PDT by freemike
Think you could avoid the TSA's body scanners and pat-downs by taking Amtrak? Think again. Even your daily commute isn't safe from TSA screenings. Direct link: motherjones
(Excerpt) Read more at motherjones.com ...
It is Mother Jones -—
think, man, think!
One of these days, some irate trucker is going to shoot one of those sons of b..........s and then whats going to happen?
So what. Is the story real or not?
Crap like what the TSA has been pulling is bringing left and right together on this issue. Everyone has a little libertarian in them.
>>So what. Is the story real or not?<<
Let us say I am... skeptical.
Not that the TSA isn’t made up from the top of classic bureaucrats and at the bottom from illiterates (frequently illiterate in 2 languages).
But Mother Jones has always been a source of socialist/communist propaganda.
I can’t get to teh Mother Jones article right now, it’s probably shashdotted.
But I think I know what it says.
I have seen TSA screener setups at public transit stations, Atlanta and Boston. Local cops use “random techniques” to select people heading for the turnstiles, and direct them to TSA agents who have explosive sniffers, metal detector wands, and other toys. They ask if you will volunteer for a bag search, ask questions about where you are going, and send you on your merry way.
I have heard of this happening other places but that’s not direct experience.
This country is not what it used to be.
I asked this question last night and got no response. I am SERIOUSLY asking this question again: HAS ANYONE EVER SEEN A FULL BURKA CLAD FEMALE BE MADE TO GO INTO THE NUDIE SCANNER OR BE MADE TO GET THE ENHANCED PAT DOWN?
Of course, I also don't agree with random checkpoints that look for drunk drivers or ramdom pee testing without probable cause.
"Constitution?" "Constitution?!?!" "We don' need no stinkin' Constitution!"
The major question is not to search, but who and when. If TSA can’t answer these, then we have more problems.
Security means that random search (re terrorists) could be useful, but are you going to search a baby or a man? I don’t put it past Moslem extremists to sacrifice one of their children in the name of Allah, but you don’t see many Moslem men with their small children on a train. Usually the child would be with their wife. Women terrorists are rare in America, excepting Obama’s buddy Bernadine Dohrn, suspected in the killing of San Francisco police officer McDonald about 1970, one of the Puerto Rican women around Morales, or Joan Chesimard, Tupac Shakur’s mother, a member of the old Black Liberation Army/BPP organization (she’s now in Cuba).
Do you want to check tall blondes, dwarfs, handicapped, grandmothers in wheelchairs, etc? Targetting needs to be better defined and refined.
While I don’t advocate that the TSA/DHS reveal the specific targets they are looking at/screening, for obvious operational secrecy, I want to know why they search, specifically white babies, black babies, Hispanic babies, Asian babies, etc. if the terrorists are Arabs/Middle Easterners, etc. Random searches here will turn up a hand- full of crap in a diaper or an adult wearing Depends.
That said, we have the problem of indigenous “affinity groups” or individuals, people who support the cause but are not necessarily officially attached to an organization. The “lone wolf” terrorist is in this group. Is a random check going to get them out of a crowd of hundreds or thousands, or will a specifically targetted search of profiled individuals be better? The Israelis use “profiling” and their safety record is the best in the world. We couldn’t even prevent Major Hassan from carrying out his massacre despite the information we had on him.
SO far no white domestic terrorist has been able to carry out known acts of terrorism though a few have tried, and they were arrested by good police work/intelligence. A few are “terrorist wannabes” while others are either psychopaths or, unmentioned, converts to Islam (Iran used Black Muslims to carry out killings in the U.S. - Major Allon and Ali Tabatabai).
Having been involved in internal security work and journalism for over 40 years, I have no faith in the TSA’s leadership nor many of their policies, and even less faith in Napolitano the Incompetent and the Dept. of Homeland Security.
We need a total review of our security programs and the mentality behind thems, but with Holder at Justice and Obama in the White House, not to mention Napolitano, the current heads of ICE and the Border Patrol (one is leaving with his head between his legs), any chance of a house-cleaning reevaluation is nil.
The Republicans need to hold all-out hearings in the House, not the first-step-in-the-water hearings that Rep. King is holding. If done right, a lot of our problems with the TSA and ICE etc could be exposed and corrections offered.
“I have a lot of trouble getting my head around the idea that “just being there” is close enough for probable cause and grounds for a stop and search. “
These are not police searches, but rather limited administrative searches to protect a specific asset. That’s the logic used. ACLU has made sure that TSA can’t act as police. For instance, the explosive sniffers could detect cocaine, but they are forbidden to do so because a pound of blow can’t hurt a bus or plane, but a pound of semtex could, so they can look for that.
Almost all bag searches are voluntary- the polite man asks if they can look, and we sheeple say of course, to make the flight on time.
So because TSA are not cops, they can do things cops can’t, which translates to the erosion of probable cause you noticed.
They should only be able to search you if there is probably cause. (Do you worship Allah?)
This needs to be a SCOTUS decision.
Left and right - everyone has a little American-American constitution in them. Libertarianism...not so much. :)
“Crap like what the TSA has been pulling is bringing left and right together on this issue. Everyone has a little libertarian in them.”
It is a hopeful sign that the present administration is so offensive to American sensibilities that parts of the left and right can find considerable common ground against it.
For example..any honest conservative would have to admit that the ACLU has done SOME good...
“voluntary”
You mean like all of the other “voluntary” things that we do?
“You mean like all of the other “voluntary” things that we do?”
Right, like taxes and strip searches.
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