Are Barack Obama's poll numbers up, or is Janet Napolitano just happy to see us?
This week, the TSA began installing full-body scanners in airports across the country. TSA employees will be viewing us in our birthday suits each time we fly. Pregnant women and children will not be subjected to these scans due to low doses of radiation; frequent fliers, however, will soon be glowing in the dark.
If we opt not to participate in such full-body scans, we will be subjected to Paris Hilton-style pat-downs by members of the same gender (TSA employees will be baffled by Chaz/Chastity Bono). The TSA has announced that pat-downs, in fact, are not enough -- screeners will utilize a "hand-sliding motion" to examine passengers' genitals, buttocks and breasts. In some cases already, TSA employees have been sticking their hands down the pants of passengers.
The only question now is whether the TSA porn movie will be titled: (a) Transportation Sexuality Administration; (b) Flying The Friendly Skies; (c) The Mile High Club; or (d) Pee-Wee's Big Airplane Adventure.
Bill Clinton is so excited that he just applied for a job at TSA.
He wouldn't be the only sexual aggressor to be working for the agency if hired. Back in March, TSA employee Sean Shanahan, who was responsible for patting down passengers including children, was indicted for multiple child sex crimes. In 2004, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) admitted that TSA put employees into action patting down passengers without even finishing background checks. That same report also stated that DHS did not disqualify applicants unless they had been convicted of felony rape or sexual abuse in the last 10 years -- so if they raped somebody 11 years ago, no problem. Judicial Watch reports that TSA has also hired illegal aliens and given them security badges in the past.
But we're supposed to trust the TSA. "We are frequently reminded that our enemy is creative and willing to go to great lengths to evade detection," the TSA explains, touting its new policies.
It's true that the enemy is willing to go to great lengths to evade detection. There is one length to which they will not go, however: converting to Christianity, Judaism or Hinduism. Our enemies are Muslim. That makes them much easier to profile. It means that we shouldn't expend resources allowing Bubba the Junior High Graduate to get off on naked scans of the nearest nun -- we should expend resources on behavior, racial, ethnic and religious profiling.
Here's the boilerplate disclaimer: not all Muslims are terrorists. And not all rectangles are squares. But all squares are rectangles, and every terrorist attempting to blow up American airplanes is Muslim.
Secretary of Homeland Security Napolitano cites the attempted Christmas Day bombing of an American airliner last year as the rationale for the new scanning procedures. Let's follow her logic. On Dec. 25, 2009, a young Muslim Nigerian named Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab traveled through security. He then boarded an airplane from Amsterdam to Detroit, and then took a quick trip to the bathroom, where he stuffed plastic explosives up his posterior. He then returned to the cabin and injected the plastic explosive with triacetone triperoxide. The bomb didn't go off, and he ended up with a scorched set of Rocky Mountain oysters.
Napolitano's solution to this problem: Send 621 million passengers through full-body scanners and then have could-be-perverts grab their butts.
I'll make Napolitano a deal: I'll accept her new security measures if she applies those same security measures to those illegally crossing our southern border.
The irony of all this is that it won't make us safer. Not one whit. So long as we treat nuns and imams the same way at the security gate, we're doomed to failure. You can't find bombs when you search 621 million passengers; they could be hidden anywhere, including Abdulmutallab's secret favorite spot. Terrorists already know how to beat this system. The scanners don't pick up what's inside body cavities. They don't make our luggage screening system any better (seriously, is there anyone in the United States who hasn't accidentally passed a pocketknife, nail clipper or Mace through security?). All this does is overload the system even further so that by the time our intrepid and steadfast TSA agents examine Muslims, they're so tired of prodding and poking that they do a cursory job.
Barack Obama and Janet Napolitano are so used to putting their hands in our pockets they can't understand why we'd object to them moving a few inches south. But we do object. Political correctness not only irks, it kills. If they get their way, planes will still be blown out of the sky. Here's the good news: At least less Americans will die, because fewer of us will be on those planes in the first place.
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