Wisconsin Sikh Shooting, Gun Control, Wade Michael Page and Profiling

When the shooting in Aurora occurred a lot of people (especially NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg) ran to the nearest microphone or blog and spoke or wrote with heartfelt indignation of their beliefs that no one needed an "assault rifle" and such things were only good for killing mass numbers of people, only the military or police should have "assault rifles" or large capacity magazines, and that those people who supported the right to own "assault rifles" had blood on their hands and so forth and so on.

These people gingerly ignored the fact that the overwhelming majority of homicides carried out with guns are done with handguns, not rifles of any kind. These people also neglected to notice the inconvenient detail that the Founders did not want an unarmed populace and an armed to the teeth military and police.

Now we just had the neo-nazi nut in Wisconsin who appears to have used a legally acquired handgun with normal capacity magazines to kill six people and wound four. The man was being monitored by certain private groups that keep an eye on noticeable hateful individuals mostly of the right-wing variety.  There is of course a legitimate question, given how the right reacts to mass murders carried out by non-whites, if whiteness as a concept needs to have the same criticism directed at it as other nationalist or racially based identities. As the United States continues to change demographically will there be other such incidents? I don't think so but you never know...


There are conflicting reports as to whether or not the FBI or other government agencies were aware of Page and his views. The slaughter caused an increase in tension with the Indian government and Indian citizens who burned US flags and said that the US needed to do more to protect Sikhs.

The Indian government rushed its consul general from Chicago, N.J. Gangte, to Wisconsin. India’s foreign minister, S.M. Krishna, said the government was awaiting the results of the U.S. investigation and he criticized the gun culture in the United States.

‘‘The U.S. government will have to take a comprehensive look at this kind of tendency which certainly is not going to bring credit to the United States of America,’’ he said.

I'm not so sure that a country which regularly persecutes Muslims and Christians and has frequent mass outbursts of horrific violence directed at those groups has any room to lecture the United States about "culture" but whatever. India's murder rate is comparable to that of the United States and the actual number of people killed is about three times higher than in the United States. And for the most part missionaries in the US don't have to worry about being burned alive by people of different religions. People in the United States don't often become so livid that a Jehovah's Witness knocked on their door, that they gather a whole bunch of friends and start pogroms against Jehovah's Witnesses. But you know how it is, everybody thinks their own stuff doesn't stink. As a NYT column cogently pointed out we simply do not live in a society that allows punishment or incarceration for bad thoughts. With only a few exceptions, you can't incarcerate people for what they might do. Page had the freedom to be a Nazi and a white supremacist. He had the freedom to think that non-whites were inferior. He even had the freedom to call for unspecified action. It's only when you either take action or make a specific threat or plan of action that the authorities can legally intervene. There are of course many sting operations that the government carries out against groups it considers to be fringe or dangerous but one man's legally justified sting operation is another man's example of an out of control Leviathan government determined to criminalize political dissent and crush opposition by fair means or foul. And even in the sting operation you usually have to DO something illegal. As the NYT column points out, there are a lot of things to take into account when we start to consider ways to prevent crime. These aren't easy questions to address. No, not by any means.

The perfect prevention of crime asks us to consider exactly how far individual freedom extends. Does freedom include a “right” to drive drunk, for instance? It is hard to imagine that it does. But what if the government were to add a drug to the water supply that suppressed antisocial urges and thereby reduced the murder rate? This would seem like an obvious violation of our freedom. We need a clear method of distinguishing such cases.

One way is to keep in mind the distinction between thoughts and actions. A traditional rule in criminal law holds that there can be no crime unless the defendant committed some act: mere thoughts, no matter how horrific, are not sufficient. Thoughts cannot be regulated; everyone has a right to think what they wish without government intrusion.

As far as the gun, again it is important to point out that the gun was purchased legally. It is not illegal to be a tattooed Nazi and own guns. You can purchase hate literature and associate, date, marry or reproduce with someone who feels the same way that you do. You can teach your children racial hatred. You can spread racial hatred through your books, audio tapes, websites, speeches, music and radio or television shows. You can unabashedly call for expulsion and/or genocide of people who don't look like you.

That is what freedom means. It's not just about the Second Amendment. It's about the entire Bill of Rights, which taken in whole, effectively indicates that you have the right to think what you want, say what you want and must be left alone by government except under very particular circumstances. If you're comfortable with the idea of getting rid of the right to bear arms are you also comfortable with the idea of government prior restraint on "bad" ideas? Or is that an assault on your freedom? I may not think anyone "needs" to listen to hate music. Do you want me deciding what hate music is? What test to purchase a gun could you devise that Page would fail and that other people would pass? Ironically this racist garbage was a Stevie Ray Vaughn fan.  Stevie Ray Vaughn was a white man who openly admitted his love for black music, performed with black musicians and who created music that spoke of peace, love and brotherhood. How does a hate rock performer idolize such a man? Again, is there necessarily any music association test we could create that would be able to predict Page's actions?

The "cost" of this freedom, bluntly, is that some people will use it for evil. There is no way to prevent this without tearing up the entire Constitution and starting anew with a radically different understanding of the proper relationship between the state and the individual. Maybe we should do that. I don't think we should. Even a much more interventionist and restrictive government can not prevent people from doing ill. So you may not like to hear that but unless you want to live in a A Clockwork Orange type of society, in a very real way evil is the price of freedom. I'm willing to pay that price. We can't un-bite the apple. Our eldil is bent and that is that.

What's your take?

Was there any way this massacre could have been prevented?

Should hate speech be outlawed? Should the First Amendment be repealed?

Should preventive detention be widely used?

Should the federal government infiltrate and destroy fringe groups?

Should handguns be banned?

Meet the New Boss: Obama and Domestic Spying

I'm your new boss. I'm SO happy to see you!!!

One of the most intriguing things about human nature is how we respond to surface changes while the substantive policy remains the same. In short, a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.

In New York City for example former Mayor Rudy Giuliani made no pretense of having much use for the black community or so-called black leaders. Under his leadership the NYPD was unleashed to harass and search black and Hispanic citizens, primarily men or boys, who could literally just be walking down the street minding their own business. Occasionally this aggressive attitude would lead to brutal or even deadly uses of force on citizens. People were outraged. They marched, protested and called the snarling churlish lisping Giuliani all sorts of nasty names.


Enter Mayor Bloomberg. Bloomberg is a "feel your pain" kind of guy. He's (usually) articulate, soft spoken, reasonable and can insult you in such a nice way that you'll thank him for doing so. He had no problem meeting with black leaders and making the requisite noises of regret any time there was a questionable NYPD incident. But the underlying policy of stop and frisk, agitate and intimidate wasn't changed. If anything, it expanded. But because Bloomberg's surface persona was much more pleasant than that of the belligerent Giuliani, much of the public controversy over police stops initially subsided. Now, however, thanks to Commissioner Kelly's pugnacity and the aggressiveness of the NYPD in crossing jurisdictional and legal lines, people may finally be starting to resist and fight back.

There's a lesson there. You may recall the Total Information Awareness Program that was aborted under then President Bush. Democrats and civil libertarians all of stripes raged against this in editorials. They thundered against it in on the airwaves. They called it creeping fascism. So the program was "dropped". Soon afterwards Hope and Change arrived.

And then people went back to sleep, content that they had stopped this wicked idea dead in its tracks. But much like the Terminator or the car Christine, ideas like this don't die. They just slowly and patiently rebuild themselves until they are reborn. Now they might have a modified name or use slightly different people as fronts. But that's all window dressing. The bottom line is government is " like fire, a handy servant but a dangerous master". The government will now be storing information on you for five years. The previous limit was 180 days.

The U.S. intelligence community can now store information on innocent Americans for up to five years under new Obama administration rules, expanding previous authority to hold details on individuals with no ties to terrorism.
The National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) was previously supposed to immediately destroy intelligence information about Americans when there were no clear ties to terrorism, but now new rules that basically justify spying on innocent Americans are being justified by terrorism fear-mongers.

But wait there's more!!! Behind door number two we have this prize for you!

NERMEEN SHAIKH: A new exposé in Wired Magazine has revealed new details about how the National Security Agency is quietly building the largest spy center in the country in Bluffdale, Utah, as part of a secret NSA surveillance program codenamed "Stellar Wind." According to investigative reporter James Bamford, the NSA has established listening posts throughout the nation to collect and sift through billions of email messages and phone calls, whether they originate within the country or overseas. The Utah spy center will contain near-bottomless databases to store all forms of communication collected by the agency. This includes the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails—parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases and other digital "pocket litter."

AMY GOODMAN: In addition, the NSA has also created a supercomputer of almost unimaginable speed to look for patterns and unscramble codes. James Bamford writes the secret surveillance program "is, in some measure, the realization of the 'total information awareness' program created during the first term of the Bush administration," but later killed by Congress in 2003 due to privacy concerns and public outcry.

Do you get this? EVERYTHING that you communicate electronically, everything that shows who you are, what you read, where you go each day, what sorts of purchases you make, etc is being gathered up in databases where it will be perused and sifted through by government agents.
Now how is this possible if we have a Democratic President, one that taught constitutional law, someone who theoretically has an understanding of the Bill of Rights, of privacy, of individual rights?

It's possible because the neither the Republicans nor Democrats have any real commitment to or understanding of the Bill of Rights. Sure both sides will mouth pious platitudes to certain constitutional guarantees when they are important for some other purpose or to a favored interest group (Republicans and the gun lobby or Democrats and the abortion lobby) but ultimately neither side could give a mosquito's tweeter about the Bill of Rights as a general limitation on the executive branch's ability to investigate, monitor, arrest or compel behavior by the individual. The current President may not have southern swagger or Texas twang or other characteristics or behavior patterns which some progressives didn't like. But when it comes to civil liberties, make no mistake, President Obama is just as dangerous as any right-wing zealot and perhaps more so. Too many people are willing to give him a pass on things they never would have tolerated from President Bush. For example, that recent Supreme Court decision that allowed strip searches of all people arrested, even those arrested for minor non-violent offenses, was supported by the Obama Administration. This cartoon puts it perfectly.

If the below bill were to be proposed today as is with no other changes I don't think it would get passed. I think that Republicans would openly oppose it as a law which protected terrorists. Democrats might say (in front of the cameras) it was a good idea in theory but in practice (once behind closed doors) would carve out so many exceptions while CLAIMING they supported the law that even if passed it would be meaningless.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

What's your take?
Are you bothered by the government gathering information on you?
If Republicans were doing this would we have heard more outcry?

Why aren't civil liberties important to more people? 

Companies Demand Facebook Passwords!



"We're watching you"

One of the nice things about being a blogger or frequent blog commenter is that you get the opportunity to build an online persona and interact with people literally all over the world. This online persona may be close to your "real life" personality or it may be 180 degrees apart. You may decide to be totally and completely transparent with readers and co-bloggers or you may hold on fiercely to your "secret" or "online identity" and associated privacy.

Now imagine if a would be employer did an online search for you and found your Facebook page. They looked at the public views and didn't find anything objectionable: no racist jokes and calls for bloody revolution, no fond memories (and pictures) of Copenhagen orgies, no five star reviews of Tijuana brothels. You're good to go right? Not so fast. Let's say that the would be employer is not convinced that you're not hiding something. After all EVERYONE is hiding something. And this employer is a watchful, distrustful sort.

So the interviewer politely asks you for your various and sundry passwords from your Facebook/disqus/yahoo/gmail/hushmail/google/linkedin/amazon/etc accounts so that they can log on as you and review all of your private pages, emails, instant messages, associates, and what you've been viewing, reading or watching in your personal time.  

• After all, you might be a terrorist or worse, an ACLU member. 
• You might have friends of friends who said something negative about the company two years ago. 
• You might belong to "problematic" political or cultural groups.
• Maybe you've sent naughty instant messages to your spouse, significant other or friend with benefits. 
• You may have neglected to mention certain medical conditions you have.
• Maybe you got a thang going on with Mrs. Jones.

Like I said, EVERYONE is hiding something. But if you're NOT hiding anything then of course you won't mind the company looking, right? RIGHT????

SEATTLE (AP) — When Justin Bassett interviewed for a new job, he expected the usual questions about experience and references. So he was astonished when the interviewer asked for something else: his Facebook username and password. Bassett, a New York City statistician, had just finished answering a few character questions when the interviewer turned to her computer to search for his Facebook page. But she couldn't see his private profile. She turned back and asked him to hand over his login information..

Bassett refused and withdrew his application, saying he didn't want to work for a company that would seek such personal information. But as the job market steadily improves, other job candidates are confronting the same question from prospective employers, and some of them cannot afford to say no...

Back in 2010, Robert Collins was returning to his job as a security guard at the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services after taking a leave following his mother's death. During a reinstatement interview, he was asked for his login and password, purportedly so the agency could check for any gang affiliations. He was stunned by the request but complied.
"I needed my job to feed my family. I had to," he recalled,
After the ACLU complained about the practice, the agency amended its policy, asking instead for job applicants to log in during interviews.

Link 

Robert Collins

I think this is just a sad state of affairs. As so many people have been apathetic or quiet about the government invading their privacy without cause whether it be NYPD/FBI spying, FISA or Patriot Act or TSA searches, it only makes sense that companies would want to get in on the act.
I can't imagine working for a company that would even have the nerve to ask me something like this. The answer would be no. I would end the interview.  Of course I'm not currently desperate for a job and I matured before online personas had become so ubiquitous. What would I do were I younger or if I needed to get some money pretty doggone quickly to avoid eviction or repossession? I would still stand on principle and tell them to attempt airborne copulation with a revolving pastry. I've got to be free. But that's just me. How about you? You may need to think about this.

And the sign said "Long-haired freaky people need not apply 

So I tucked my hair up under my hat and I went in to ask him why  

He said "You look like a fine upstanding young man, I think you'll do"  

So I took off my hat, I said "Imagine that. Huh! Me workin' for you!"   

Questions

1) Would you agree to give a company passwords to your Facebook, emails, blogs, etc?

2) Should this be illegal?

3) Do you think a company would ever have any valid reason to ask for this information?

Obama's Indefinite Detention Bill

President Obama is poised to sign a bill (The National Defense Authorization Act-NDAA) which really honestly leaves me almost unable to write because I'm so angry. To put it mildly this is a very bad bill.
It codifies and regularizes indefinite detention of American citizens without trial within the United States of America. Yes that's right. Theoretically you could be minding your own business, running your blog, sending naughty IM's to your SO, chatting with various people across the blog-o-sphere and suddenly jackbooted black helmeted thugs could break down your door, tase you and seize your pc and other private effects and documents, blind you, gag you and prevent you from hearing anything and leisurely drag you off to the local military base (or as far as I know private detention center) where military or national security personnel could keep you imprisoned for as long as they like.

Lawyers? Warrants? Habeas corpus? Bump all that!!!! Of course I'm sure that they wouldn't like torture you or threaten to torture your loved ones because that would be illegal. And with the effective right to a speedy trial guaranteed under the Sixth Amendment , your rights to due process and protection against self-incrimination guaranteed under the Fifth Amendment and especially your protection against warrantless arrest and search guaranteed under the Fourth Amendment you can certainly tell the large humorless men with guns and nightsticks that as they have NO right to hold you you're walking out of there. Yes.


Of course before they start the waterboarding they will probably inform you that under the NDAA the country just collectively squatted and relieved itself over the Bill of Rights. The military, law enforcement and national security personnel don't need to worry about such quaint details anymore. And if THEY don't YOU certainly don't.


It is ironic that people from across the political spectrum from left-wing black nationalists to white racist paleocons to right leaning libertarians to classical liberals to radical socialists can all see the dangers in this bill, soon to become law. Unfortunately the larger American citizenry doesn't see the danger because otherwise something like this would never have been passed in the first place. Certainly the bipartisan Beltway elite don't care because as they well know this bill is not aimed at THEM. It's aimed at YOU.

Laws like this are usually passed because politicians claim to want to keep us safe. The problem is there is no such thing as complete safety. And by trying to reach it you inevitably attack freedom. We all know the Benjamin Franklin quote.

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.

But it's worse than that. It's not just well-intentioned people making mistakes out of fear. President Obama may or may not possess the discipline and wisdom to use "responsibly" the powers granted in this new bill. But what about future Presidents? Based on his statements about arresting judges who rule in ways that he finds faulty do you think a President Gingrich could be trusted not to indefinitely detain a few "pointy headed liberals" he doesn't care for? Would a future President Chris Christie find it amusing to indefinitely detain national union leaders who wouldn't sign on to his Social Security plan?  Would a future feminist President order a dismantling of the men's rights movement? Heck, were I President, could I be trusted not to immediately detain Gloria Allred?

Seriously the point is that NO ONE should have to ask those kinds of questions. The entire point of this republic is that no one (wo)man should have that power. Power is supposed to be limited and split among the three branches of government-with the balance held by the people. When one branch of government (or one person) has that kind of power the temptation to use it against political enemies is overwhelming. The act of doing so becomes inevitable. It's not just cheap hyperbole to say that this is the twilight of the republic. On this issue it doesn't matter whether it's Bush or Obama. They are both horrible on civil liberties. Frankly, Obama is sliding into "worse" territory.


There is an excellent analysis of this bill's dangers by legal scholar Glenn Greenwald here. I implore you all to go read it in full as he has the legal knowledge which I lack to put all this into depressing perspective. Some highlights

• The NDAA codifies into law indefinite detention
• The NDAA does not exclude American citizens
• The NDAA permanently expands the scope of the War on Terror.

What’s particularly ironic (and revealing) about all of this is that former White House counsel Greg Craig assured The New Yorker‘s Jane Mayer back in February, 2009 that it’s “hard to imagine Barack Obama as the first President of the United States to introduce a preventive-detention law.” Four months later, President Obama proposed exactly such a law — one that The New York Times described as “a departure from the way this country sees itself, as a place where people in the grip of the government either face criminal charges or walk free” — and now he will sign such a scheme into law.

So far I've only seen one national political figure who has the stones to speak out against this new bill. You may not like him for other reasons but on this issue he's dead on target.

Ron Paul speaks out.

h/t Jonathan Turley

QUESTIONS
1) Do you think President Obama will sign this bill? If so why?
2) Are civil liberties a concern for you personally? Why or why not?
3) Do you think American citizens should be immune from military detention without trial?

Racial Profiling on Airplanes-Detroit Incident

It's never a good thing to be accused of or questioned about something that you had nothing to do with. When the people doing the accusing or questioning have the full might of the US Federal Government behind them, it's even worse. And it's really bad when the primary reason for the accusation or questioning is not something that you did, it's how you look. I've been through some minor instances of this a few times but never anything like what recently happened to Shoshana Hebshi, a Toledo woman of Jewish-Arabic heritage.

On September 11, 2011, there was an incident at Detroit Metro Airport that made national news. Reportedly a few dark-complected men were allegedly "acting suspiciously" during a Denver to Detroit Frontier Airlines flight.  The story was that they were in the bathroom together or one was in the bathroom for too long. F-16 fighter jets were scrambled and escorted the airliner to its suburban Detroit destination.

Law enforcement personnel and bomb squad specialists surrounded the plane. Armed police stormed the plane yelling at everyone to put their heads down and their hands on the seats in front of them.

(AP) -- An Ohio woman who was one of three people taken off an airplane at Detroit's airport and questioned on the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks says she was shocked when armed officers stopped at her row and ordered her off.

Shoshana Hebshi, 35, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview Tuesday that she believes she was targeted because of her Middle Eastern appearance. Hebshi, who describes herself as half-Arabic, half-Jewish with a dark complexion, said she endured nearly four hours in police custody that included being forced off an airplane in handcuffs, strip-searched and interrogated.

NEWS LINK

Please read Shoshana's detailed blow-by-blow account of what happened here. It's moving stuff.

Things like this make me very angry because in my humble opinion it shows that America has succumbed to its fears. We're losing the sense that the police/government should have limits on their actions. We have implemented a sort of deliberate overreaction which is more about flaunting the power of the state over the individual than it is about stopping any terrorist attack.

I hope that the legal experts who read and/or author this blog will chime in but to this simple guy from Detroit, it seems that something has gone drastically wrong with this society when the mere whisper of suspicion can cause F-16 FIGHTER JETS to scramble, an armed team to enter a plane and an American citizen to be detained for four hours without arrest or warrant, handcuffed and STRIP-SEARCHED.

I do not think that the so-called War on Terror and the US Constitution are compatible. I am worried that if forced to choose, too many of my fellow citizens and their elected representatives will choose (have chosen?) the War on Terror. This means increasing numbers of "exceptions" to the Bill of Rights, increased militarization of the Police and politicization of the Armed Forces as their roles and duties merge, and of course ongoing "intelligence" gathering on American citizens-what websites you read, who you give political support to, what books you buy, where you travel, who your friends are, who you talk to and so on. And why would you oppose any of this? You don't want the terrorists to win do you? Do you?

For what's it worth neither Shoshana Hebshi nor the South Asian men were charged with any crime and nothing of danger was found on the plane. Evidently the dudes weren't in the bathroom at the same time either. No new members were inducted into the "mile high club" (same sex division)

QUESTIONS
1) Did anyone do anything wrong here or are these just the times we live in?
2) Would Hebshi have been within her rights to refuse to answer any questions w/o an attorney present? What would you have done?
3) If you see a group of South Asian/Middle Eastern people sitting together on an airplane do you get nervous ?(Don't answer if you're Juan Williams-got your response already)
4) Should Hebshi sue? If so whom?

TSA Pats Down Six Year Old Girl

I was going to write out a very long essay explaining why I think these TSA searches are demeaning, illegal and unconstitutional. Many of the TSA's processes need to be stopped for good.  But honestly I  (a) don't have the time, (b) am far too angry having watched that smirking saurian Napolitano defend the practice on MSNBC's Morning Joe and (c) think that this video and the parent's statements tell the truth of what all this is about far more than I ever could hope to do.

“Nobody likes to see those kinds of things, in we doing that even though it was done professionally according to the protocols,” Napolitano said. “But, what TSA is doing is reexamining those protocols all the time. It’s all in relation to threat – what is the threat? And one of the things we do see is if you categorically remove a group from any type of screening, well those who seek to do us harm will then exploit that group. So you have to be very careful on how you do it.”

BS!!!! This is a big heaping pile of BS. And it stinks.

The whole issue with the 9-11 attacks and attempted attacks since then is that they have fundamentally and perhaps permanently altered our ideas about guilt and innocence and which is more important to find. Additionally they have tragically reduced people's interest in freedom and increased their interest in so-called security. This goes far beyond left and right. It's about who has interest in freedom and who does not.
To live anywhere is to accept risk. This week, somewhere in this country a mother is abusing her children. Some young man is going to shoot some other young man. A woman will be raped. Someone will drive drunk. Someone will get into a fist fight at a bar. Someone is abusing their spouse or planning to have them bumped off for the insurance money. As I am writing this some nut could come shoot up the place. Someone is turning a blind eye to worker safety in favor of profit. Someone is planning what she thinks will be the perfect embezzlement. Someone is robbing a liquor store and shooting the owners. And so on.

Generally speaking, we don't allow the police to fan out and break into people's homes they THINK will commit those crimes and search for evidence. With a few exceptions, we don't allow police to search people walking down the street just because. And we certainly don't base our justice system or everyday rules in society on the theory that it is better that 10,000 innocent people have their rights violated than let one guilty man go free. The government can not provide 100% security. But it can strip you of your rights.

Eventually, some determined terrorist will hide a bomb in his or her body cavities. What then?
Does this mean every other citizen, regardless of age, gender, or personal beliefs about privacy must then submit to public cavity searches?  Free prostate exam/pap smear with every 5000 miles flown??
This is ridiculous. The TSA should be severely limited in these sorts of searches. I would much rather see a honest debate about current immigration policies- i.e. is it really a good idea to allow immigration from countries we are currently bombing? The example of Faisal Shahzad would seem to indicate that maybe, just maybe it might not be. You can not invade the world and then invite the people you've invaded to come to your country. Some might hold grudges. Some hail from places where grudge holding is damn near a statutory requirement of citizenship.
If that girl in the video had been my kin I don't think I could have tolerated that.
The TSA needs to be forced to stop these searches. I don't care about the possibility of attack. There are some rights which are simply fundamental. If we are putting our hands down the pants of six year olds, it is WAY PAST time to reject this entire paradigm.

What do you think? Is the TSA doing the best it can, or is this a power grab by the exact sort of people who shouldn't have this sort of power? Should children be exempt from these searches? Are you okay with strangers feeling on you in public? How do we tell children don't let anyone touch you in certain places...except for the TSA agents, their police backups, etc.