TSA forced cancer patient to show breast implant

Feds holding firm on intrusive airport security

by Eileen Sullivan

WASHINGTON (AP) - Despite a deluge of complaints over intrusive pat-downs and revealing airport scans, the government is betting Americans would rather fly safe than untouched. "I'm not going to change those policies," the nation's transportation security chief declared Wednesday.

Responded a lawmaker: "I wouldn't want my wife to be touched in the way that these folks are being touched."

The debate over where to strike the balance between privacy and security, in motion since new safety measures took effect after the 2001 terrorist attacks, has intensified with the debut of pat-downs that are more thorough, and invasive, than before, and the spread of full-body image scans.

"The outcry is huge," Texas Republican Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison told the TSA administrator, John Pistole, at a Capitol Hill hearing. "I know that you're aware of it. But we've got to see some action."

The new hands-on searches are used for passengers who don't want the full-body scans, or when something suspicious shows in screening, or on rare occasions, randomly. They can take two minutes per passenger and involve sliding of the hands along the length of the body, along thighs and near the groin and breasts.

The new scans show naked images of the passenger's body, without the face, to a screener who is in a different location and does not know the identity of the traveler. The U.S. has nearly 400 of the advanced imaging machines deployed at 70 airports, growing to 1,000 machines next year.

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Ron Paul Responds to TSA with 'American Traveler Dignity Act'

Ron Paul: "If enhanced pat downs are good enough for the American people, they’re good enough for Congress."

Ciggarette tax hike creates total drag on sales

by Brendan Scott

ALBANY -- Sales of taxed cigarettes have plummeted a staggering 27 percent statewide since the highest cigarette tax in the nation took hold in July, a Post analysis has found.

Law-abiding cigarette dealers have sold an average of 30 million packs of smokes in each of the last four months -- some 11 million fewer than before Gov. Paterson and lawmakers raised the state tax on cigarettes to $4.35 a pack in a scramble to close a massive budget gap.

Such a drop in smoking would exceed even the wildest imaginations of anti-smoking advocates, who estimated the arrival of the $10 cigarette pack would trim sales by 8 to 10 percent as cash-squeezed smokers cut back or quit.

More likely, experts say, sales have simply shifted to nearby tax havens that allow New Yorkers to stockpile cut-rate smokes at the expense of the state treasury.

Both Pennsylvania and Vermont, which each have significantly lower cigarette taxes, have seen tobacco sales rise since New York's hike, The Post's analysis found.

The Post reported in August that retailers said sales were off by as much as 45 percent in stores bordering low-tax states like Pennsylvania and Vermont, as well as tax-free Indian reservations in western New York and on Long Island.

The hike raises the average price of a pack of Marlboros to $11.60 in New York City, compared to $5.93 in Matamoras, Pa.

Anecdotal reports suggest sales are booming on in-state Indian reservations, where tribes have so far stymied Paterson's efforts to collect taxes on cigarettes sold to non-Native Americans.

"That's what we warned would happen, and obviously it has come to fruition," said James Calvin, of the New York Association of Convenience Stores.

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Disabling Cell Phones in Cars?

by The Patriot Post

Apparently, virtual strip searches and "love pats" at airports aren't oppressive enough for the federal government. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood this week discussed government mandating cell phone scramblers in automobiles. "I think the technology is there and I think you're going to see the technology become adaptable in automobiles to disable these cell phones. We need to do a lot more if we're going to save lives." Indeed, it's never enough for big government advocates.

LaHood, who is a Republican (snort), is missing a few side effects of this Big Brother idea. Blogger Ed Morrissey lists them:

• The scrambler would also affect the passengers in a car that want to use their cell phones, which doesn't do anything to improve public safety.

• The presence of multitudinous scramblers in autos driving in a city will likely render cell phones used by pedestrians useless as well, or at least unreliable.

• Adding more required equipment to cars will make them more expensive, and increase the value of used cars without the scramblers.

• People who want to make calls from their cars or allow their passengers to do so will likely hold onto current vehicles longer.

• Anything installed in a car can be disabled by the owner, especially electronics. Will car owners have to submit to random searches, or annual verification of scrambler functionality? Will the federal government make that yet another unfunded mandate on the states?

• People also get distracted by eating, reading printed material, and applying make-up. Shall we ban drive-through restaurants, newspapers, and cosmetics, too?

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) admitted in a report this week that they can't draw a statistical relationship between deaths in vehicles and cell phone use. But no matter, "safety" is the reason for all sorts of intrusion. Morrissey concludes, "Finally, we come to the most basic point, which is that traffic law enforcement is not a federal jurisdiction. It's a state and local jurisdiction."

There's also such a thing as personal responsibility. Bureaucrats hate that one, though -- it ruins all their fun.

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