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| [credit: Joel Pett, Lexington Herald Leader] |
Wackydoodle sez: Bring a pint of yer blood too!
{27.11.10}The First Traveler says the insulting and intrusive searches are necessary to keep domestic flights safe (no body searches on Air Force One). ACLU says they have received over 900 search related complaints in the last month. The groping by TSA agents has not been proven more effective than normal pat downs. And there is anecdotal evidence that naked body scanners are being set off by panty liners, thereby subjecting the wearer to a crotch search. The searches without more evidence of specificity and protection for bodily integrity are probably unconstitutional. Read the travel horror stories here.
Update: Just to remind us that the "war on terror" will be with us for as long as the Cold War, FBI agents in Stumptown entrapped* an 18 year old alienated, possibly emotionally disturbed, Somali immigrant into parking a government supplied van supposedly filled with explosives near a crowded holiday tree lighting ceremony in the town square. Two older FBI agents posing as jihadist brothers "immersed themselves" in the life of an immigrant college student who had expressed hatred of the United States. The FBI began monitoring his mail in 2009. He was put on a no-fly terror list, and thereby prevented from taking a summer job in Alaska. The suspect exchanged e-mails with an alleged jihadist in Pakistan who claimed terrorist contacts. One of the agents contacted the young suspect with ideas of how he could become involved with violent jihad. The indictment is full of the sweaty details of meetings and suggestions initiated by the agents who obviously held sway over the suggestible, alienated teenager longing for the romance of Islamic struggle. He was willing to act no doubt, but the idea of a driving a van equipped with a bomb close to the celebration was the government's idea, not the deluded teenagers'. If anything, the indictment proves just how desperate the hysterical super-patriots are to stir the pot of fear and intolerance. The local paper inflates this self-justifying concoction of federal officials into a "bomb plot"! Perhaps what the indictment describes rises to the level of a terror plot only in liberal Stumptown, because it is one of the first cities to opt out of the joint federal terrorism task force five years ago. Obviously, that decision has not sat well with federal law dogs. Naked airport screenings, anyone?
*Entrapment is a legal defense. The key to an entrapment defense is to show that the idea of the alleged criminal act originated with the police or government agents instead of the suspect.
Update: Just to remind us that the "war on terror" will be with us for as long as the Cold War, FBI agents in Stumptown entrapped* an 18 year old alienated, possibly emotionally disturbed, Somali immigrant into parking a government supplied van supposedly filled with explosives near a crowded holiday tree lighting ceremony in the town square. Two older FBI agents posing as jihadist brothers "immersed themselves" in the life of an immigrant college student who had expressed hatred of the United States. The FBI began monitoring his mail in 2009. He was put on a no-fly terror list, and thereby prevented from taking a summer job in Alaska. The suspect exchanged e-mails with an alleged jihadist in Pakistan who claimed terrorist contacts. One of the agents contacted the young suspect with ideas of how he could become involved with violent jihad. The indictment is full of the sweaty details of meetings and suggestions initiated by the agents who obviously held sway over the suggestible, alienated teenager longing for the romance of Islamic struggle. He was willing to act no doubt, but the idea of a driving a van equipped with a bomb close to the celebration was the government's idea, not the deluded teenagers'. If anything, the indictment proves just how desperate the hysterical super-patriots are to stir the pot of fear and intolerance. The local paper inflates this self-justifying concoction of federal officials into a "bomb plot"! Perhaps what the indictment describes rises to the level of a terror plot only in liberal Stumptown, because it is one of the first cities to opt out of the joint federal terrorism task force five years ago. Obviously, that decision has not sat well with federal law dogs. Naked airport screenings, anyone?
*Entrapment is a legal defense. The key to an entrapment defense is to show that the idea of the alleged criminal act originated with the police or government agents instead of the suspect.