Will You Have A Strip Search With Your Packet of Peanuts, Or A Sexual Assault?

Those are your only choices. This is something that has rapidly become a very, very hot topic - the new policy from the government agency that is working hard to replace the IRS as the most hated bureaucracy, the TSA. It's been coming for months, but it seems the pot has finally boiled over.

For the record, I'm all for reasonable security to protect Americans from terrorist threats. But the key here is reasonable. I think it was Ben Franklin who once said that people who give up too much of their freedoms to gain a little security will end up with neither, and I think that is happening before our eyes.

Bottom line: the TSA has implemented a new policy in many airports that requires people of all ages to step through a backscatter scanner, which presents an image of the person's naked body to a TSA employee. The idea is that the scanner will reveal any potential weapons being hidden in that person's clothing, but the privacy issues are extremely troubling. Here's an example:

It's nothing less than a strip search, albeit a virtual one. The TSA maintains that there is no way to copy or store the images taken of your naked self...buuuuuut...it's still somehow magically happened, anyway. Huh. Go figure. That's SHOCKING given that the machines were designed to use stored images in test mode. And forget about the potential thorns of child porn laws. Nah, those are irrelevant. Anyway, the strip-search scanners are optional at this point, but if you decline them you'll be subjected to the pat-down sexual assault option.

Whereas the previous pat-down used the backs of the TSA agent's hands and avoided some of the most *ahem* sensitive areas, this new procedure doesn't. If you choose this option, you're going to get the kind of full, open-handed grope-fest that would thrill a teenager, boobs and crotches included. I kid you not, and kids are not exempt. Apparently, though the TSA used to mean "thousands standing around", now it means "touching sensitive areas".

If you want to see just how ugly this has gotten, lock down your stomach and watch this:

This poor girl's father was a TV reporter. Oops. Of course, this sort of thing is probably playing out all over the country every day. What will you do when it happens to one of your kids?

These scanners aren't legally required right now...this trampling of our privacy was an order by the Obama administration. And oh, by the way, they were purchased with stimulus funds. I think they're stimulating something, but it's not an economic recovery!

For all of these reasons, the American people are PISSED. The outrage is so big, in fact, that there are numerous efforts at generating lists of people who have vowed not to fly as long as these abuses are still being perpetrated by the TSA. With the biggest travel season of the year coming up, the impact of these efforts -- if successful -- may be significant.

One pilot refused the strip search scanner, and is likely going to lose his job because of it. This may become an increasingly big problem, as the world's largest pilots association has formally suggested its members boycott the strip search scanners. So has the flight attendants' union.

One man recently got thrown out of the airport in San Diego after telling the TSA agent that if they 'touched his junk' he would have them arrested. The problem is, of course, that the full weight and authority of the government is behind this policy, so people refusing to submit to this treatment will likely result in bad things. This guy in San Diego is also potentially liable for thousands of dollars in civil penalties.

Because, you know, sexually assaulting children is much more preferable to something really radical like profiling Muslims who might be terrorists. No, they're going to let anyone wearing Muslim garb breeze right on through security. RedState sums it up:

How perfectly Orwellian that, while non-Muslim Americans are having their Fourth Amendment rights being groped, grabbed and trampled by Napolitano & her gang, Muslims are being urged to use the First Amendment’s Freedom of Religion provision to all-but-ignore the TSA screening measures.

The administration's response to the anger? It's for your own good. Why is it that every time liberals force new invasions into people's privacy and freedom, they always do it for our own good?

And the TSA doesn't appear to have a healthy respect for the people they're abusing. This background was recently photographed on one TSA computer:

In case you can't read it, here's a close-up:

I dunno about you, but I don't really find that funny, given that one of these yahoos is going to be groping my son the next time we fly. And I'm not the only one...one concerned parent expressed it this way:

“We spend my child’s whole life telling him that only mom, dad and a doctor can touch you in your private area, and now we have to add TSA agent and that’s just wrong. At some point the terrorists have won."

While I think we all would agree that the terrorists win bigger by actually killing Americans...come on! This is ridiculous and offensive, and has to stop. Look at this and tell me whether or not you think the terrorists are winning here:

There is also renewed scrutiny on just how much radiation bombards a person in each of those scanners; they could present a genuine health risk, especially for frequent fliers.

And oh, by the way, lobbyists and these manufacturers are making hundreds of millions of dollars off of the sale of these strip search scanners. Not that that would have anything to do with the government's insistence on using them, of course.

And the final bit of irony is that anyone who knows anything about airport security understands that this sort of searching is nothing more than surface level fluff, anyway. It's not serious security, and it won't prevent any but the most stupid terrorist attacks from occurring.

But back to the subject at hand. At the same time that government agents are gawking and groping us, we have the Pope encouraging everyone to 'respect their bodies', and a guy just landed in jail for four months for posting pictures of his naked ex-girlfriend on Facebook. Would someone tell me how the new TSA policy is any different than these things?

This is what happens when liberals run unchecked. At its core, liberalism is all about control, which is the opposite of the foundational principle of this country: individual liberty. When liberals are in charge, piddly things like protecting children, privacy, and even your Constitutional rights are secondary in importance to their ability to control you for your own good. The TSA policy is a perfect example of that fact in the real world.

Bottom line: what we have here is government-sponsored strip searches, sexual assault, or massive financial penalties. Welcome to Obama's America.

This issue won't go away soon, especially without a massive, sustained outcry from the American people. If you plan to fly anytime soon, you need to figure out how you will handle this because you will be confronted with this choice at some point. Get on the phone and call your Senators and Rep - demand that they review these policies. Security is a vital thing, but it must be accompanied by some semblance of reasonable common sense. We cannot give up our freedoms to invasive and offensive policies like this, and this is a great place to make a stand.