editorial in my paper Re: TSA from...you guessed it...a Repub

[w8liftinglady]

http://www.thedailylight.com/articles/2010/11/21/opinion/doc4ce6e9a1a967c006874060.txt

Republican Liberty Caucus rejects TSA assault on privacy rights
Published: Friday, November 19, 2010 3:42 PM CST
AUSTIN, Texas��” The Republican Liberty Caucus (RLC) denounces the recent changes in the airport passenger screening practices of the Transportation Security Administration.



RLC Chairman Dave Nalle said the intrusive nature of new TSA procedures draw attention to the fundamental flaws in the government’s strategy of attempting to address the threat of terrorism through increasingly draconian domestic security measures.



“In the name of public safety, government agencies have been given more and more power at great cost to our civil liberties and in violation of the Bill of Rights,” Nalle said. “The emergence of an unaccountable state security apparatus in America is a reminder of Ben Franklin’s maxim that ‘they who give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.’


“The new TSA procedures of giving randomly selected passengers a choice between a full body, backscatter x-ray scan and an intrusive, hands-on body search are unacceptable,” Nalle contends. “These searches are a clear violation of our 4th Amendment rights, because they are not reasonable and are carried out with no probable cause.



“The increase in security at airports with more technology and more violation of the privacy rights of passengers cannot be justified on the basis of any increase in the threat of terrorism, because there has been no such increase,” Nalle explained.


The RLC believes that the level of power and authority granted to agencies like the Department of Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Administration is out of proportion to any actual threat against the American people. Terrorism is not a significant threat on flights within the United States and basic security measures instituted immediately after 9/11 have been sufficient to deter any similar attacks since that time.


The Republican Liberty Caucus believes that the people of the United States have had enough and calls on the federal government to curb abuses by the TSA and other agencies.

“We recommend putting control of passenger security in the hands of the airlines, which have a vested interest in making sure that flights are safe. We also support the passage of Representative Ron Paul’s American Traveler Dignity Act (HR 6416) which would make TSA employees accountable for their actions.”
Nalle observed, “With the increasing level of government intrusion into our lives in the name of security, America reminds me too much of what I saw in the Soviet Union, where I lived as a teenager. How long will it be before police will be stopping us in the street at random to ask for our identity papers?”


The Republican Liberty Caucus is a nationwide grassroots organization which promotes individual liberty and limited government within the Republican Party. www.rlc.org

[louis-t]

1. Can you imagine if it were a bush policy?

If you disagreed with it, you would be called a traitor and accused of siding with terrorists.

[truedelphi]

3. Some of us are being denounced -

And the new meme is (I guess) that you are either for the TSA cavity searches, or you are not a progressive.

[w8liftinglady]

4. see my other post on The Patriot Act...deja vu

[phasma ex machina]

5. I welcome all resistance to fascism regardless of where it originates. nt

[notesdev]

9. and in fact

we were... at which point, if the accuser were present, he would get a very detailed lecture on the Bill of Rights.

[truedelphi]

2. Sometimes some Republicans have it right.

They nailed it during the MTBE debate here in California, and thanks to their activism, the Democratic Governor finally put together an excellent team of scientists who told us what many people already surmised - MTBE is a chemical second only to benzene in being a danger to human health.

For myself, I welcome people of any and all political parties to join together in stopping this nation on its continual slippery slope into a non-democratic, corporate controlled state, where the only few things missing from the Third Reich philosophy of FEAR ALL THE TIME FOR EVERYONE are the uniforms, goose stepping and swastikas.

But like the Jews and the dissidents in 1933 Germany, many of us are are already deprived of the ability to work, or possess our homes, and are now expected to full anal cavity search or radiation from machinery whose health effects remain unknown.

[Bobbieo]

6. I finally agree with the RW on something.

[w8liftinglady]

7. I agree with this as well...what I fail to see is their protest to the Patriot Act

[truedelphi]

10. Might have something to do with the fact that they love the word

"Patriot."

If TSA was the "Patriot TSA," then they'd be okay with it

[LibDemAlways]

8. I don't see this as a left v. right issue. It's hard to imagine

any American not caring about the government literally getting into their underwear, groping their genitals, or x-raying them. Ordinary people who want nothing more than to get from point A to Point B should be able to do so without being humiliated.

[zbdent]

11. I wouldn't be surprised if you looked back far enough and found

a letter from the VERY SAME REPUBLICAN going on and on about how the "lefties" wanted the terrorists to win because they protested the "procedures" of the TSA as put forth by Bush ... along with the illegal wiretaps and torturing ...