I experienced the enhanced patdown myself, at DCA, on Tuesday. It was invasive, but not as bad as these stories.

Here’s the thing: I have a zero-tolerance policy for physical violation — hell, shaking hands can be an ordeal for me — so rationalizing something as “invasive but not bad” makes no sense whatsoever. The more I see people justifying a certain amount of physical assault (how much?) for a certain amount of security (how much?), the more hopeless I feel about our chances as a society. Put aside for a moment how the TSA’s policies came to be. Why are people so willing to accept being groped by so-called security experts making $13 dollars an hour? Are they so afraid? Will they not do the research for themselves? Do they know the odds of dying in a terrorist attack — 1 in 30 million — is roughly equivalent to the odds of contracting fatal skin cancer from just one trip through a backscatter device? (And cancer is hardly the only side effect of radiation.)

This is a human rights issue. Schneier describes airport security zones as “extra-Constitutional areas,” but the ACLU, for one, has already taken the TSA (and the DHS) to court for violations of Constitutional rights. This is hardly a shut case, which is why we must continue to resist the TSA’s “extra-Constitutional” policies by any means.

In the meantime, for me personally there is no amount of physical invasion that is tolerable, no matter how irrational our fear of explosives-wearing boogeymen.

PS: I know it’s somewhat misguided for me to lay so much blame on the populace. As is usual in these matters, the other half of the truth behind this debacle lies behind the old question: who benefits? Follow the money and you’ll find the usual politicians enriching themselves on lobbyist snacks. We should direct our outrage accordingly.

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I am not suggesting, of course, that the president incite a war to get reelected. But the nation will rally around Obama because Iran is the greatest threat to the world in the young century. If he can confront this threat and contain Iran’s nuclear ambitions, he will have made the world safer and may be regarded as one of the most successful presidents in history.

There’s so much wrong with this disgusting blather that it’s difficult not to think that I’m misunderstanding it.

First of all, you are suggesting that the president go to war for political gain, and to argue otherwise is to split hairs.

Second, Iran is the greatest threat to the world? I’m not even sure that Iran is the most threatening country to the world, let alone its greatest threat. What about hunger, disease, or climate change? How about globalization, or the privatization of food and water supplies by corporations? Domestically, how about corporate personhood, plutocracy, oligarchy? And if you measure threats solely by nuclear arsenals, and a nation’s willingness to go to war, then the United States is clearly the greatest threat to the world.

Last point, there must be a logical fallacy that addresses this “greatest threat” frame. Let me put it this way: there will always be a greatest threat. There must always be a greatest threat, even if you find yourself in a sealed room with only a ferret and hedgehog. If you live in a universe where you’ve somehow managed to eliminate every viable threat down to the hangnail on your left thumb, does that mean it’s time to go to war with it? The phrase “greatest threat” is nigh meaningless.

I’m not familiar with David Broder, but he sounds like an idiot.

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Jeremy Scahill on GritTV

Beginning almost immediately after September 11th, Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld essential segregated JSOC (about JSOC) from the rest of the military. And the idea there was that they were going to create a sort of stand-alone military force that would reply directly to the administration rather than the military chain of command. So essentially JSOC has an open classified mandate where they can take people — snatch then, they can carry out targeted assassination, and they also run their own bombing campaign inside of Pakistan, I’m told, that runs parallel to the CIA’s. And one of the reasons why this is significant is that all of the actions of the CIA have to be briefed to the so-called “Gang of Eight” — in the intelligence committee, Dianne Feinstein and others — and these operations, I’m told, are not being briefed to the Congress.

In other words, while the United States States trumpets the rule of law, it is by and large a country that routinely circumvents any pesky law that stands in the way of profit, subjugation, or imperialism. (The scary thing is that, where Blackwater are concerned, the US military may actually agree with my sentiments.)

Jeremy Scahill has his own blog, and is an active twitterer.

(via YouTube)

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[The TSA Supervisor on duty] grabbed the baggie as it came out of the X-ray and asked if it was mine. After responding yes, he pointed at my comment and demanded to know “What is this supposed to mean?” “It could [mean] a lot of things, it happens to be an opinion on mine.” “You can’t write things like this,” he said. “You mean my First Amendment right to freedom of speech doesn’t apply here?” “Out there (pointing pass the id checkers) not while in here (pointing down),” was his response.
(via flyertalk.com)

Facing public scrutiny, TSA spokeswoman Yolanda Clark later backpedaled, saying that Bird was free to express his opinion, that writing on bags is not prohibited. “The passenger was never detained by TSA,” she explained. “Local law enforcement briefly interviewed him and determined he had not broken any laws, and he was allowed to fly.”

BoingBoing’s own Cory Doctorow describes his experience with arbitrary seizure of property:

I flew from SFO to LAX yesterday morning, and was robbed at gunpoint by a TSA agent, who stole my cologne, face-wash, and moisturizer. She said that my moisture baggie could only contain vessels of 3 oz or less’ worth of moisture. I pointed out that all these vessels did have less than 3 oz’ worth of moist substances in them, as they were all half-empty, and she said yes, but the vessels were capable of holding more than 3 oz.
(via BoingBoing)

I feel safer already. Don’t you?

(via BoingBoing)

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But it doesn’t require much of an imagination to realize that anyone seeking to bear arms in these times has a charred little hate cinder somewhere beneath their flag tattoo.

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