We knew that Southwest Airlines had weight restrictions. Now it seems it has a dress code too

Last time Southwest Airlines hit the news, it was because their maintenance sucks. Before that it was because Kevin Smith was deemed too overweight to fly on their airplanes. But who's Kevin Smith, anyway? Outside of snarky fanboys and fangirls, do most Americans know who he is?

Now they may have messed with the wrong pop culture figure. Because Southwest perhaps might have wanted to think twice about kicking a guy who penned an album that became the anthem of a generation off their planes for ridiculous reasons:

Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong says he was asked to leave a plane he was travelling on in California for not pulling up his trousers.

The singer, 39, tweeted to say: "Just got kicked off a Southwest flight because my pants sagged too low!"

[snip]

Cindy Qiu, a local TV producer, was on the flight and described what happened on her company's website.

She says she heard Billie Joe Armstrong ask the flight attendant who'd demanded he pull up his trousers, "Don't you have better things to do than worry about that?"

Now, it's true that when one is on a plane, one is supposed to listen to the flight attendant for safety reasons. But kicking someone off a plane for wearing low-rise pants?

The band is back in the studio. I for one can't wait to see the song about Southwest Airlines. Perhaps Kevin Smith will appear in the video.

Oh fer cryin out loud...

This is not from The Onion:

TSA warns of implant bombers, prepares fliers for swab tests

The latest threat to America's skies -- explosive surgical implants that authorities have dubbed "belly bombs" -- poses a security challenge so bizarre that air travelers learning of the new danger Wednesday could only scratch their heads and wonder what's next.

If those fliers had collagen injections or dental implants, what's next may mean having their heads examined. Literally.

The Transportation Security Administration advised airlines that terror groups are believed to be experimenting with explosives that could be implanted in buttocks and breasts, allowing suicide bombers to pass through airport body scanners undetected.

[snip]

The TSA said it had no evidence of a specific plot, but intelligence sources indicated this new twist in bomb-proofing international air travel was likely the handiwork of Ibrahim Asiri, the al-Qaeda mastermind behind the Christmas Day attempt to bring down a Northwest Airlines plane by the so-called "underwear bomber."

Few Americans could have imagined when the first airport metal detectors were installed more than four decades ago that travelers would one day be expected to nearly disrobe before boarding their flights. The idea of implanting explosives in the same places plastic surgeons use to "enhance" many Americans does not strike Zoltan Prokay as far-fetched.

"If they do it properly, like a breast implant where the skin is stretched to accommodate the device, it could work," said Prokay, who spent two and a half years in Iraq working to detect improvised explosive devices as a member of a U.S. Special Forces team. He was flying out of San Jose as a pilot for a private airline, which he declined to identify, when word of the TSA advisory began to spread. "It could be set to go off at a certain altitude. If you get an altimeter implanted in your other breast though, maybe you would set off the metal detector."

Prokay sees it as a natural -- if horrifying -- progression from the Shoe Bomber and the Underwear Bomber. "This would be the Bosom Bomber," he said. "It's not funny. And yet it is kind of funny. The Bosom Bomber."

"If (terrorists) really want to attack, there is always a way," Renata Boudon, 47, said in French after arriving at San Francisco International for a two-week vacation in the western United States. "It doesn't scare me much." She and her two sons, 18-year-old Eric and 12-year-old Marc, live in Brazil and said they won't change anything about their travel habits because of the new information. "If it happens, it happens," she said. "There is nothing you can do."

Renata Boudon of France is a hell of a lot smarter than the idiots who populate this country, who will no doubt line up like sheep to have their breasts and buttocks grabbed by TSA agents in the name of national security.

It sure sounds like this is the TSA's way of justifying intrusive "pat-downs" that are often more like being groped by a creep on a crowded subway.

Another reason not to fly unless you have to

There really is no reason for this:

A woman has filed a complaint with the Department of Homeland Security over how her elderly mother was detained and searched by Transportation Security Administration officers at the Northwest Florida Regional Airport last weekend.

News Herald reported that Jean Weber filed the complaint after her wheelchair-bound 95-year-old mother, who is in the final stages of her battle with leukemia, was asked to remove an adult diaper during a pat down search.

According to Weber, her elderly mother was first taken to a glass-partitioned area and patted down before being taken to another room. As she was waiting outside of the room, officers conducting the pat down told Weber that her mother's Depends diaper would need to be removed because it was soiled and impeding their search.

“It’s something I couldn’t imagine happening on American soil,” Weber said. “Here is my mother, 95 years old, 105 pounds, barely able to stand, and then this.”

Weber took her elderly mother to the bathroom and removed her diaper, then returned to complete the pat down. She said she did not have another clean diaper with her.

A spokesperson for the TSA said that officers must follow the same procedures for everyone to prevent terrorists from finding vulnerabilities in the security check points.

/speechless.

Chuck Schumer needs to just STFU

Who needs Republican fearmongering when you have a grandstanding moron like Chuck "Where's the Camera?" Schumer:

A senator on Sunday called for a "no-ride list" for Amtrak trains after intelligence gleaned from the raid on Osama bin Laden's compound pointed to potential attacks on the nation's train system.

Sen. Charles Schumer said he would push as well for added funding for rail security and commuter and passenger train track inspections and more monitoring of stations nationwide.

"Circumstances demand we make adjustments by increasing funding to enhance rail safety and monitoring on commuter rail transit and screening who gets on Amtrak passenger trains, so that we can provide a greater level of security to the public," the New York Democrat said at a news conference.

U.S. officials last week said evidence found after the raid on bin Laden's compound in Pakistan indicated the al Qaeda leader or his associates had engaged in discussions or planning for a possible attack on a train inside the United States on September 11, 2011.

Schumer, citing U.S. intelligence analysts, said attacks were also considered on Christmas and New Year's Day and following the president's State of the Union address.

He called on the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to expand the Secure Flight monitoring program, which cross-checks air travelers with the terror watch list in an attempt to prevent anyone on the "no-fly list" from boarding, for use on Amtrak.

Such a procedure would create an Amtrak "no-ride list" to keep suspected terrorists off the U.S. rail system, he said.

What a fucking moron. Hasn't he ever seen Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid?

Now, in fairness, Paul Newman and Robert Redford DID get on that train, not just put a bunch of dynamite on the tracks. But do you think a "no-ride" list would have stopped that train robbery? Hardly. And it wouldn't stop a terrorist from putting a piece of C4 explosive on a train track either. So what purpose exactly does Chuckie Cheese think a "no-ride list" would serve?

It's enough to drive a person mad. I have family in North Carolina, and I'm running out of ways to get there. I don't like to do a 10-hour drive alone in a car with eighty thousand miles on it. I don't like the idea of flying in a tin box piloted by someone who gets paid less than an assistant manager at Abercrombie & Fitch. Now if Chuck Schumer has his way we'll go through the same pointless bullshit at Penn Station that we do at the airports. So what's left? Greyhound buses?

And yet, I'm sure there are people out there, the same frothing morons out in God's country who have lived the last ten years terrified that Muslim terrorists are going to blow up the local Hardee's while they're in there enjoying a Monster Thickburger and a caramel crunch hand-scooped ice cream shake, who are going to be shown on the evening news saying, "Well, if it makes us safer....".

So what's next? Backscatter scans in order to pick up a bottle of White Citrus lotion at Bath and Body Works at the mall? Checkpoints at state borders on highways? Strip searches in order to pick up a venti skim vanilla latte at Starbucks at the Molly Pitcher Service Area? How far are we going to take this? And for God's sake, why is a fucking Democrat advocating this?

What Glenn Greenwald said:

So Al Qaeda breathes the word "trains" and Schumer jumps and demands the creation of a massive, expensive and oppressive new Security State program to keep thousands and thousands of people off trains.  The "no-fly" list has been nothing short of a Kafkaesque disaster: with thousands of people secretly placed on it without any explanation or real recourse, oftentimes causing them to be stranded in faraway places and unable to return home.

To replicate that for trains -- all because some documents mentioned them among thousands of other ideas Al Qaeda has undoubtedly considered over the years -- is hysteria and ludicrous over-reaction of the highest order. Trains can obviously be attacked without boarding them (indeed, these documents apparently discussed tampering with the rails, which wouldn't require boarding the trains at all). And if there's a "no-ride" list for Amtrak, why not for subways and buses, too? If Al Qaeda is found to have discussed targeting restaurants, will we have a no-eat list? If Al Qaeda is found to have discussed targeting large intersections or landmarks, will we have a no-walk list? How about a no-shop list in response to the targeting of malls?

But this, more or less, encapsulates the U.S. response to Terrorism since 9/11: the minute Al Qaeda utters a peep about anything, the political class collectively jumps to restrict our freedoms, empower the Government, and bankrupt ourselves in self-destructive pursuit of the ultimate illusion: Absolute Security. Al Qaeda has caused us to do more harm to ourselves than it could have ever dreamed of imposing on its own. And even in death, Osama bin Laden continues to serve as the pretext for all of this.

Word.

Just something to note

While Glenn Beck advocates shooting everyone who doesn't agree with him in the head, and we all are forced to submit to x-rays and groping in order to visit Grandma just because one guy smuggled explosives in his underwear, a bomb went off in an airport in Russia yesterday OUTSIDE THE SECURITY CHECKPOINTS.

Think about that, the next time you go pick someone up at the International Arrivals terminal at JFK, or stand in a long line at the Continental counter behind a couple hundred people on their way to their Caribbean vacations.

More TSA follies

I can't help but wonder how long it's going to be before we have to be groped and scanned to get into department stores, shopping malls, sports events, movie theatres....

After all, who said that planes were the only terrorist targets? Maybe soon we'll have to be scanned before leaving the house.

UPDATE: And then there's this:

The pilot, whose name has not been released, uploaded a series of clips taken at San Francisco International Airport. His intent was to expose the insane double standard of TSA's airport employee screening policies: Although pilots and flight attendants are required to pass through the same concourse checkpoints as passengers, many ground workers, including baggage handlers, caterers and cabin cleaners, are exempt from these checks. The YouTube segments, which have since been taken down, showed ground employees passing through a simple turnstile on their way to work. You can see some highlights from the videos in this television news report by News10 in Sacramento, Calif., where the pilot lives.

This has been TSA policy from the beginning. It is also something I've been writing about in my columns, on and off, for the past eight years. Finally the issue is getting some attention -- if not entirely for the right reasons. This should be a story about farcical security practices; instead, as the media has been playing it, it's the story of a renegade pilot.

TSA says the pilot's actions are "under review," citing the possible release of what the agency calls, "sensitive security information."

That's a head-spinner if you ask me. The screening rules are public knowledge. It's not the pilot's fault that the rest of the country has been ignoring them.

What the pilot really did, of course, is throw a ring of well-deserved embarrassment around TSA's neck. And in typical fashion, the agency's response is not to review, revise or even acknowledge its foolish rules, but to harass and bully and threaten the person who drew attention to them.

[snip]

The pilot in question is also a participant in the Federal Flight Deck Officer program -- a voluntary anti-hijacking scheme that allows specially trained airline pilots to carry handguns in the cockpit. Strangely and perhaps most disturbing of all, agents from the TSA and Department of Homeland Security reportedly came to the pilot's home and confiscated his weapon.

I am hardly a firearms aficionado, and I have mixed feelings about the FFDO program in general. But this disturbs me. What grounds, exactly, did any federal agency have to visit the man's home for any reason, let alone to suspend or revoke this man's FFDO accreditation?

Yet somehow I'm not surprised. This is what happens when, in the throes of fear, you bestow a bureaucracy with lots of power and little accountability. TSA has scant respect for reason or rational policy; point out its foibles, meanwhile, and apparently you risk having agents being sent to your residence. Is this really the United States of America?

And while you receive radiation just to go visit grandma.....

GUNS are slipping by airport hand luggage scanners:

Last fall, as he had done hundreds of times, Iranian-American businessman Farid Seif passed through security at a Houston airport and boarded an international flight.

He didn't realize he had forgotten to remove the loaded snub nose "baby" Glock pistol from his computer bag. But TSA officers never noticed as his bag glided along the belt and was x-rayed. When he got to his hotel after the three-hour flight, he was shocked to discover the gun traveled unnoticed from Houston.

"It's just impossible to miss it, you know. I mean, this is not a small gun," Seif told ABC News. "How can you miss it? You cannot miss it."

But the TSA did miss it, and despite what most people believe about the painstaking effort to screen airline passengers and their luggage before they enter the terminal, it was not that unusual.

The issue is not that the guy is Iranian. The issue is that a loaded gun got through the security theatre that has YOU either getting x-rayed just to get on an airplane or groped by strangers -- or sometimes both.

Who benefits? And where are the opportunities?

The story of terrorism, and the fight against terrorism in this country, always contains a question: Who Benefits?

9/11 "Truthers" speculate on who benefitted from the 9/11 attacks, but you don't have to be a "Truther" to wonder, when a presidency was deemed in the press to be over almost as soon as it began turned into a press darling over the corpses of nearly three thousand people. Dick Cheney has profited handsomely over contracts given to Halliburton in Iraq.

A year after the so-called "underwear bomber", whose own father notified the U.S.Embassy in Nigeria that his son was planning something, failed in his attempt to bring down an airliner, and weeks after CARGO PLANES were targeted, air passengers are being whipped into a frenzy of terrorism fear again by a TSA that works according to some strange alchemy in which ignoring cargo but x-raying and groping passengers somehow prevents explosives from being deployed on cargo planes.

Despite the potential risks to both passenger and TSA worker posed by radiation administered to travelers by low-wage workers without medical training, and despite the consensus among security experts without a financial stake in body scanners that their implementation simply is not effective, not only are more airports planning to deploy these monstrosities, but there is a very real possibility of Americans having to go through this security theatre nonsense if they want to take a cruise or a ferry, or get to work via train or subway.

If you have ever worked in New York City, or commuted to ANY major metropolitan area, or for that matter, ever been any place where people congregate -- shopping malls, ball games, concerts, ballets, operas, megachurches, you can imagine the chaos that would result from a requirement to be groped or strip-searched just to get to work, or watch the Yankees play, or go see Bruce Springsteen, or take your aunt from Dubuque on the Circle Line.

They're getting away with it for air travel because the images of the 9/11 attacks are etched into our minds. But taken to this logical extreme, as Janet Napolitano appears to be considering, I wonder if Americans will stand for it.

Images of government-money sugarplums are dancing in the heads of lobbyists for the x-ray scanner industry, who are the REAL beneficiaries of this insanity, as Cenk Uygur, who seems to be handling the anchor load on MSNBC during this holiday weekend all by himself, noted yesterday:

We already know that George W. Bush's head of the Department of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff, stands to profit handsomely from the indiscriminate deployment of these scanners. Chertoff has been a tireless advocate for this industry, advocating that the "administration must stand firm against privacy ideologues"in a Washington Post op-ed last January.

Who else benefits?

There's an opportunity here for the progressive netroots to find common cause with the Tea Party, if we only dare to take it. Granted, many Tea Party followers give lip service to the Constitution without knowing what's in it beyond the Second Amendment. But as I've often said, the political spectrum is sometimes less a continuum than a circle, in which left and right eventually meet at the top. All too often, civil liberties have been framed as a leftist issue, what with George H.W. Bush calling his opponent during the 1988 campaign a "card-carrying member of the American Civil Liberties Union". But now that the right has been whipped into a frenzy about "big government", and Tea Partiers are subject to virtual strip searches and government-mandated groping along with the Dirty Fucking Hippies they loathe, perhaps there's some room here to find common cause. And once we find common cause there, are there other areas as well?

All Of Your Thanksgiving Plans Are Belong To Us

Don't want a low-wage TSA flack to zap you with x-rays of undetermined risk? Don't want to have your breasts and privates groped by TSA flacks?

Then stay home. Call grandma and tell her she'll have to live without you this year. Because once you enter the TSA Twilight Zone, you enter an existential nightmare from which there is no escape:

If you don't want to pass through an airport scanner that allows security agents to see an image of your naked body or to undergo the alternative, a thorough manual search, you may have to find another way to travel this holiday season.

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is warning that any would-be commercial airline passenger who enters an airport checkpoint and then refuses to undergo the method of inspection designated by TSA will not be allowed to fly and also will not be permitted to simply leave the airport.

That person will have to remain on the premises to be questioned by the TSA and possibly by local law enforcement. Anyone refusing faces fines up to $11,000 and possible arrest.

"Once a person submits to the screening process, they can not just decide to leave that process," says Sari Koshetz, regional TSA spokesperson, based in Miami.

Koshetz said such passengers would be questioned "until it is determined that they don't pose a threat" to the public.

Palm Beach Sheriff's Office spokesperson Teri Barbera said PBSO deputies stationed at the airport would become involved when requested by the TSA.

By the way, I don't for one minute believe that flacks from private companies will make this any less humiliating, or any less of a violation of the 4th Amendment. Private companies are no hedge against government-sanctioned sexual assault.

(via)

...and another one

Here’s what took place… minute by terrifying minute…

I had Jackson in his stroller, his diaper bag, and a duffle bag which contained my mac book as I entered security. I placed all of these items on the conveyor belt to go through the metal detector. Jackson was in my arms, and in the midst of getting all of our gear on the conveyor belt, my mistake was neglecting to take off my son’s pacifier clip that hangs from his shirt, which is metal.

The instant I walked through the metal detector with Jackson in my arms, we beeped. I knew exactly why.

I told the TSA agent, who asked me to back up and walk through again, “It’s my son’s pacifier clip, can I put it on the conveyor belt?”

“Ma’am turn around and come back please,” I was told.

Of course Jackson’s clip went off again. Both Jackson and I were then escorted to a 6 ft tall plastic holding box because I was forced to wait for a female TSA agent to search me.

At this point in time, all of my belongings were sitting at the opposite end of the conveyor belt, thereby backing up every other passengers belongings because I was not there to gather mine.

A woman out of the kindness of her heart (and if you are out there somewhere reading this, THANK YOU) saw me just standing and waiting in my 6 ft plastic box and gathered my belongings for me. She waited with my stroller, my diaper bag, my duffle bag and my mac book. This woman motioned to me that everything (including my flip flops) was all together and then she left.

She must be a mother.

She understood.

I was so grateful.

4 female TSA agents stood at the end of 2 conveyor belts, gloves on their hands, none of them searching anyone, none of them doing anything but watching luggage pass through the conveyor belts.

It was at this point in time that I realized my flight was leaving in less than 45 minutes. I had not even been searched yet. I began to panic.

Through the 6 holes in the plastic box that contained Jackson and I, I began asking for help. I waved to all 4 female TSA agents, each of them looked at me and then looked away. Then I started speaking through the 6 holes, and said, “Can someone please search me? My flight leaves in less than 45 minutes.”

Each of the 4 women answered me using the same exact phrase…

“Ma’am you need to wait. I don’t care about your departure time.”

Eventually one of the four female TSA agents opened the door and let Jackson and I out of our plastic containment box. We were escorted to a chair that was opposite from where my belongings were. I asked if I could bring my belongings over or take a seat closer to where they were. I was told no and to take my seat.

At this point in time, my heart began to race, thinking we would miss our flight and I would be stuck in the Atlanta airport with Jackson for who knows how long until there was another flight to Baltimore.

The female TSA agent stood in front of me while I sat with Jackson and she continued to watch luggage come through the conveyor belt.

“Ma’am, can someone please just search me so we can be on our way? We are going to miss our flight,” I said.

The female agent then called an older gentleman, also a TSA agent over. The male TSA agent stood in front of me and said “I’m going to have to pat down your son.”

With Jackson still sitting in my lap (he was being so good despite all of this chaos) I said ok and continued to hold on to my son, expecting the male TSA agent to start touching Jackson.

He then told me, “I’m going to have to pick him up to inspect him.”

I rolled my eyes and sternly told him “It’s his pacifier clip that went off, can’t you just run that back through the belt and let us go. We are going to miss our flight.”

The female TSA agent, who had been standing there the entire time said to me, “You need to adjust your attitude and do as you are told.”

The male TSA agent repeated, “I’m going to have to pick him up to inspect him.”

I handed him my son.

I handed him my son and he walked away with my child.

Read the rest here.

And check out this one too.

The only way this madness will stop is if we Just Stop Flying. Your family members out of state will just have to learn to use Skype. Because the Department of so-called Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Theatre Administration will not stop this madness until the money guys -- the airlines -- beg them to because no one is flying.

In other TSA news....

I went through Charlotte Douglas International just about a month ago, before the junk-o-scans were put into use. I may not fly into there ever again after reading this:

Cathy Bossi lives in south Charlotte and has been a flight attendant for the past 32 years, working the past 28 for U.S. Airways.

In early August Bossie was walking through security when she says she was asked to go through the new full body-scanners at Concourse "D" at Charlotte Douglas International.

She reluctantly agreed. As a 3-year breast cancer survivor she says she didn't want the added radiation through her body. But, Bossi says she did agree.

"The T.S.A. Agent told me to put my I.D. on my back," she said. "When I got out of there she said because my I.D. was on my back, I had to go to a personal screening area."

She says two female Charlotte T.S.A. agents took her to a private room and began what she calls an aggressive pat down. She says they stopped when they got around to feeling her right breast… the one where she'd had surgery.

"She put her full hand on my breast and said, 'What is this?'. And I said, 'It's my prosthesis because I've had breast cancer.' And she said, 'Well, you'll need to show me that'."

Cathy was asked to show her prosthetic breast, removing it from her bra.

"I did not take the name of the person at the time because it was just so horrific of an experience, I couldn't believe someone had done that to me. I'm a flight attendant. I was just trying to get to work."

And in case you're tempted to blame Barack Obama for all this, aggressive patdowns have been going on since the Bush years:

An Amarillo woman is suing the federal government for intentional infliction of emotional distress after Transportation Security Administration agents allegedly humiliated the woman when her breasts were publicly exposed during an "extended search" two years ago at a Corpus Christi airport.

The suit, filed earlier this year in Amarillo's U.S. District Court, alleges the woman was singled out for "extended search procedures" while preparing to board an aircraft destined for Amarillo on May 29, 2008.

The Amarillo Globe-News has declined to identify the woman for privacy reasons.

"As the TSA agent was frisking plaintiff, the agent pulled the plaintiff's blouse completely down, exposing plaintiffs' breasts to everyone in the area," the lawsuit said. "As would be expected, plaintiff was extremely embarrassed and humiliated."

The suit said the woman filed an administrative claim against the TSA, but the agency never responded, sparking the lawsuit.

The suit also claims that other TSA employees continued to joke and laugh about the incident for an extended period of time. The woman was distraught over the incident and left the screening area so an acquaintance could console her, the suit said.

When the woman re-entered the boarding area, employees once again began joking about the matter, the suit said.

"One male TSA employee expressed to the plaintiff that he wished he would have been there when she came through the first time and that 'he would just have to watch the video,'" the suit said.

Don't expect Congress to do anything about the TSA

Why should they? THEY're exempt:

Representative John A. Boehner, soon to be the Speaker of the House, has pledged to fly commercial airlines back to his home district in Ohio. But that does not mean that he will be subjected to the hassles of ordinary passengers, including the controversial security pat-downs.

As he left Washington on Friday, Mr. Boehner headed across the Potomac River to Reagan National Airport, which was bustling with afternoon travelers. But there was no waiting in line for Mr. Boehner, who was escorted around the metal detectors and body scanners, and taken directly to the gate.

Mr. Boehner, who was wearing a casual yellow sweater and tan slacks, carried his own bags and smiled pleasantly at passengers who were leaving the security checkpoint inside the airport terminal. It was unclear whether any passengers waiting in the security line, including Representative Allen Boyd, a Florida Democrat who lost his re-election bid, saw Mr. Boehner.

At a Capitol Hill news conference after Election Day, as Mr. Boehner began laying out the changes he would make when he becomes House Speaker, he announced that he would continue to fly commercial airlines (usually Delta) back to Ohio. It was a not-so-subtle dig at the outgoing Democratic speaker, Nancy Pelosi of California, who had been criticized by Republicans for flying military airplanes when she returned home to San Francisco.

“Over the last 20 years, I have flown back and forth to my district on a commercial aircraft,” Mr. Boehner said at the time, “and I am going to continue to do that.”

And so on Friday, he did. But not without the perquisites of office, including avoiding those security pat-downs that many travelers are bracing for as holiday travel season approaches.

Michael Steel, a spokesman for the Republican leader, said in a statement that Mr. Boehner was not receiving special treatment. And a law enforcement official said that any member of Congress or administration official with a security detail is allowed to bypass security.

And just like Andy Harris wanting HIS health insurance on day one upon taking office but campaigned on a platform of repealing acces to health insurance for "the little people", Congress isn't going to take on something that doesn't affect them personally.

And yet Ted Kennedy found himself on a no-fly list. Funny how these things work, isn't it?

Another TSA horror story

Just go read it.

Do YOU want to rely on TSA staff to deliver a "safe" dose of radiation to your body?

The so-called "safety" of the TSA scanners that are making Michael Chertoff rich, even if you want to believe it's there, is dependent on the same people who are pulling attractive young women out for extra pat-downs. Do YOU trust a $25,000-a-year, relatively unskilled flack with this:

"They say the risk is minimal, but statistically someone is going to get skin cancer from these X-rays," said Dr. Michael Love, who runs an X-ray lab at the department of biophysics and biophysical chemistry at Johns Hopkins University school of medicine, according to a Agence France Presse story.

Love's comments, reported Sunday on the AlterNet website, came amid calls for a national revolt on airport body scanners, with plans firming up for a "National Opt-Out Day" set for Nov. 24, the day before Thanksgiving, in which airline passengers are urged to refuse a body scan and opt instead for a pat down in airport security lines on the busiest travel day of the year.

Travel experts are predicting chaos in the terminals. But I'm hoping the added attention sheds more light on the cancer question, because Love is far from alone in venting his health concerns.

[snip]

Dr. David Brenner, head of the center for radiological research at Columbia University in New York, told the London Telegraph in a June 29 story that considering the large number of people who frequent the nation's airports, wide-ranging exposure, even to minimal amounts of radiation, could add up to one big concern.

"If all 800 million people who use airports every year were screened with X-rays, then the very small individual risk multiplied by the large number of screened people might imply a potential public health or societal risk," he said. "The population risk has the potential to be significant."

Scientists with the University of California at San Francisco were so worried that they wrote a letter to the White House Office of Science and Technology in April raising "a number of red flags" on the scanners' safety.

"While the dose would be safe if it were distributed throughout the volume of the entire body, the dose to the skin may be dangerously high," the letter said in part, adding concerns that "independent safety data do not exist" and raising the potential for further harm if a high dosage was accidentally emitted.

"Any glitch in power at any point in the hardware (or more importantly in the software) that stops the device can cause an intense radiation dose to a single spot on the skin. Who will oversee problems with overall dose after repair or software problems?"

The Office of Science and Technology last month responded to the concerns with a nine-page letter assuring the UCSF scientists that the doses met safety standards and had been adequately tested.

"The potential health risks from a full-body screening with a general-use X-ray security system are miniscule," the government agency wrote. "Several groups of recognized experts have been assembled and have analyzed the radiation safety issues associated with this technology."

But one co-author of the UCSF letter, biochemist John Sedat, told AFP in Sunday's AlterNet story, that the government's explanation was "deeply flawed" and insufficient to ease scientists' concerns.

Follow the Money

Anderson Cooper on Michael Chertoff's conflict of interest regarding airport scanners:

THAT, my friends, is what journalism looks like.

Germany knows what happens when people are obedient sheep

One of the things that impressed me about Germany when I was there for two weeks last summer for work is the way that country has been willing to stare itself in the face about the less-savory aspects of its history. The Holocaust museum, situated right by the Reichstag, is a moving reminder. The footprint of the Berlin Wall is etched into the pavement. The idea of "Never forget" is on display in Berlin every day. Yes, there are pockets of neo-Nazis, but at least so far, Germany has been far more willing to look at itself in the mirror and confront itself than we have. Here we have politicians who use code phrases like "original intent" and "return to the Constitution" and references to the Confederate flag to minimize the cruelty and viciousness of slavery. Here we have politicians who would be perfectly willing to round up Muslims and put them into camps and political "pundits" who still defend the internment of the Japanese during World War II. Museums and monuments to these less-savory aspects of our own history are hidden away where few people visit them.

One of the by-products of being constantly reminded of the peril of turning into obedient sheep is heightened awareness of when real threats to freedom start to rear their ugly head. So while Americans line up mindlessly to have radiation sprayed into their bodies just to get on an airplane, the young denizens of Berlin aren't going gently into that good scanner:

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Tattoos of Mass Destruction

Thinking of getting a tattoo? You'd better be careful what it says, or you could find yourself being hassled as a potential terrorist when you travel:

Noted Los Angeles food stylist Adam C. Pearson was settling into his seat aboard a Delta flight Saturday morning when the flight attendant tapped him on the shoulder and asked him to come to the front of the plane. His first thought? "I'm getting an upgrade!"

Not exactly.

Pearson was temporarily asked to step off the plane and learned that another passenger had reported him for suspicious behavior, and noted that he had the words "Atom Bomb" tattooed across his fingers. Questioned by the captain and the flight attendant, Pearson explained that the tattoos referred to a childhood nickname. After answering a few more questions, Pearson -- who is a frequent Delta passenger and has flown over 142,000 miles with the airline this year alone -- was allowed to return to his seat.

Uh, yeah. Because someone who plans to bring down a plane is going to FUCKING ADVERTISE IT BY GETTING A TATTOO ON HIS KNUCKLES.

When did we become such a nation of fucking babies?

(via)