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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Obama's hand in your crotch

by The Washington Times

The Transportation Security Administration's demeaning new "enhanced pat-down" procedures are a direct result of the Obama administration's willful blindness to the threat from Islamic radicals. While better tools are available to keep air travelers safe, they would involve recognizing the threat for what it is, which is something the White House will never do.

El Al, Israel's national airline, employs a smarter approach. Any airline representing the state of Israel is a natural - some might say preeminent - target for terrorist attacks. Yet El Al has one of the best security records in the world and doesn't resort to wide-scale use of methods that would under other circumstances constitute sexual assault. The Israelis have achieved this track record of safety by employing sophisticated intelligence analysis which allows them to predict which travelers constitute a possible threat and which do not. Resources are then focused on the more probable threats with minimal intrusion on those who are likely not to be terrorists.

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"Obamacare is an abject failure.”

Did You Know Your Airport Can Opt Out of TSA Molestations?

by Byron York

Did you know that the nation's airports are not required to have Transportation Security Administration screeners checking passengers at security checkpoints? The 2001 law creating the TSA gave airports the right to opt out of the TSA program in favor of private screeners after a two-year period. Now, with the TSA engulfed in controversy and hated by millions of weary and sometimes humiliated travelers, Rep. John Mica, the Republican who will soon be chairman of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, is reminding airports that they have a choice.

Mica, one of the authors of the original TSA bill, has recently written to the heads of more than 150 airports nationwide suggesting they opt out of TSA screening. "When the TSA was established, it was never envisioned that it would become a huge, unwieldy bureaucracy which was soon to grow to 67,000 employees," Mica writes. "As TSA has grown larger, more impersonal, and administratively top-heavy, I believe it is important that airports across the country consider utilizing the opt-out provision provided by law."

In addition to being large, impersonal, and top-heavy, what really worries critics is that the TSA has become dangerously ineffective. Its specialty is what those critics call "security theater" -- that is, a show of what appear to be stringent security measures designed to make passengers feel more secure without providing real security. "That's exactly what it is," says Mica. "It's a big Kabuki dance."

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GE to buy 25K electric fleet vehicles

Government-subsidized GE to buy government-mandated car from government-owned GM with government-confiscated money....

by Aaron Smith

GE said Thursday it will buy 25,000 electric vehicles for its fleet through 2015 in the largest-ever purchase of electric cars.

GE will begin with an initial purchase of 12,000 vehicles from General Motor Co., starting with Chevy Volt in 2011. The conglomerate said it "will add other vehicles as manufacturers expand their electric vehicle profiles."

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Commentary by I Hate The Media:

Unfortunately, we don’t have one of those handy Glenn Beck chalkboards, but please stick with us as do our best to explain this situation.

Corporation A (let’s say General Electric) heavily invests in green technology that no one wants. When this tech fails to generate revenue adequate to bankroll its own existence, stimulus funds are provided to help keep the company afloat.

Corporation B (let’s say General Motors) is effectively taken over by the government. At the government’s direction, an electric car is designed and manufactured. Although it is touted as an innovation in green technology, no one wants it.

Corporation A, which is awash with taxpayer stimulus cash, promises to buy at least 25,000 of these cars from Corporation B, which is awash in government ownership. The sticker price is $41,000 per unit, although it is possible that Corporation A will get a handsome quantity discount from Corporation B.

Simultaneously, congress is pursuing legislation that will force consumers to use green tech. The same sort that Corporation A is so heavily invested in.

Surprisingly, this story was not reported by Corporation A-owned MSNBC.

California's Destructive Green Jobs Lobby

by George Gilder

California officials acknowledged last Thursday that the state faces $20 billion deficits every year from now to 2016. At the same time, California's state Treasurer entered bond markets to sell some $14 billion in "revenue anticipation notes" over the next two weeks. Worst of all, economic sanity lost out in what may have been the most important election on Nov. 2—and, no, I'm not talking about the gubernatorial or senate races.

This was the California referendum to repeal Assembly Bill 32, the so-called Global Warming Solutions Act, which ratchets the state's economy back to 1990 levels of greenhouse gases by 2020. That's a 30% drop followed by a mandated 80% overall drop by 2050. Together with a $500 billion public-pension overhang, the new energy cap dooms the state to bankruptcy.

The irony is that a century-long trend of advance in conventional "non-renewable" energy—from wood to oil to natural gas and nuclear—has already wrought a roughly 60% drop in carbon emissions per watt. Thus the long-term California targets might well be achieved globally in the normal course of technological advance. The obvious next step is aggressive exploitation of the trillions of cubic feet of low-carbon natural gas discovered over the last two years, essentially ending the U.S. energy crisis.

The massive vote against repeal of the California law—62% to 38%—supports an economy-crushing drive to suppress CO2 emissions from natural gas and everything else. In a parody of supply-side economics, advocates of AB 32 envisage the substitution of alternative energy sources that create new revenue sources, new jobs and industries. Their economic model sees new wealth emerge from jobs dismantling the existing energy economy and replacing it with a medieval system of windmills and solar collectors.

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A Muslim Student's True Opinion

Click here for your free copy of Sharia Law For The Non Muslim...

TSA Can Only Pat Down Muslim Women’s Head, Neck

by Meredith Jessup

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has issued a travel notice to Muslim airline passengers, warning them that new regulations from the Transportation Security Administration violate certain religious rules.

According to CAIR, the TSA’s new “enhanced pat down” policy should be limited to searching only around Muslim women’s head and neck if they are wearing a hijab and that Muslims objecting to the enhanced full-body scans have the right to request the pat-down procedure be done in a private place.

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The Idiots Guide to the Destructiveness of Public Spending

Global warming skeptic may take over Science Committee

by Robin Bravender

The likely next chairman of the House Science Committee says “reasonable people have serious questions” about the science connecting manmade greenhouse gas emissions to global warming.

Rep. Ralph Hall (R-Texas) on Wednesday vowed to investigate the Obama administration’s climate policies if he becomes chairman.

“This administration argues that cutting greenhouse emissions as a policy directive is justified by science,” Hall said at a hearing organized by Democrats and billed as a “rational discussion” on climate science before the GOP takes over. “I think this hearing today will demonstrate and should demonstrate that reasonable people have serious questions about our knowledge of the state of the science,” he added.

Hall, currently the science panel’s ranking member, criticized the administration for proceeding with regulations to slash greenhouse gas emissions despite a staggering national debt and raised doubts about whether those rules are necessary.

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Obama’s Organizing for America is guilty of voter fraud

Gerrymandering 101

by Zombie

Gerrymander: It’s a dirty word. Everyone knows it’s a political insult, but not everyone understands exactly what it means. And even many of those who know what gerrymandering is don’t fully grasp how it completely dominates American politics.

Welcome to Gerrymandering 101.

Pundits across the political spectrum are now noting that the 2010 Republican tsunami was bigger and more significant than it might appear on the surface, because the Republicans not only won a record number of federal races, they also utterly crushed the Democrats in local races, winning at least 675 seats in state legislatures. This spells doom for the Democrats because next year the states will re-draw the congressional district lines to accommodate the results of the 2010 census:

When the 2010 Census results are announced next month, the 435 House seats will be reapportioned to the states, and state officials will draw new district lines in each state. … Republicans look to have a bigger advantage in this redistricting cycle they’ve ever had before.

“Advantage”? Advantage in what? Isn’t drawing little squiggly lines on a map the most boring and least consequential job imaginable?

Think again. Remember this motto: He Who Draws The Lines Determines The Winners.

Yes, it’s that simple. If you can’t quite visualize how gerrymandering can possibly succeed — after all, the number of voters stays the same no matter how you group them, and if you exclude opposition voters from one district, you necessarily must include them in an adjacent district — keep reading. This essay explains in no uncertain terms how manipulating district boundaries can lead to a complete subversion of true representative government.

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Liberals Urging Obama to Ignore Voters and Congress

by Ed Morrissey

Former President Bill Clinton’s chief of staff John Podesta, now the head of the Center for American Progress, called on President Obama to push forward with his agenda using federal agencies and executive branch power Tuesday, even though Democrats were dealt a blow in the recent midterm elections. Podesta said the American people want the president to move forward with his agenda.

“I think most of the conversation since the election has been about how President Obama adjusts to the new situation on Capitol Hill,” Podesta said. “While that’s an important conversation, it simply ignores the president’s ability to use all levels of his power and authority to move the country forward.”

Citing his experience in Clinton’s White House after the GOP House takeover of 1994, Podesta said Obama’s administration “can and should take” the specific measures detailed in a report released by the Center for American Progress, utilizing all the tools at its disposal to circumvent Congress in a way to keep his agenda moving forward.

“One of the best ways for the Obama administration to achieve results of that nature, in the short term, is through substantial executive authority to make and implement policy,” Podesta said. “As noted in the Constitution and the laws of the United States give the president the ability and the responsibility to act as the chief executive using authorities granted to all presidents such as executive orders, rule-makings, agency management and public-private partnerships.”

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Woman Claims TSA Agent Violently Frisked Her

TX Gov. Perry Wants to Send Military Into Mexico

by Peggy Fikac

AUSTIN — GOP Gov. Rick Perry, who continues to insist he's not interested in the presidency, is nevertheless always ready to tell the federal government how to do a better job on such matters as border security — including indicating the U.S. should be open to sending military into Mexico to help fight the drug war.

Appearing on MSNBC on Thursday, Perry was asked, “Would you advocate military involvement in Mexico on the Mexico side of the border to help Mexico in this drug war?”

Perry answered: “I think we have to use every aspect of law enforcement that we have, including the military. I think you have the same situation as you had in Colombia. Obviously, Mexico has to approve any type of assistance that we can give them.

“But the fact of the matter is, these are people who are highly motivated with money. They are vicious. They are armed to the teeth. I want to see them defeated. And any means that we can to run these people off our border and to save Americans' lives we need to be engaged in.”

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Does ObamaCare Reduce Health Care Spending?

by Veronique de Rugy

Yesterday, former Congressional Budget Office and Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag had a piece in The New York Times claiming that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 is an essential element to keeping future health care costs down. Worried that Republicans will make good on Election Night vows to repeal ObamaCare, Orszag's basic argument in summed up in his commentary's headline: "To Save Money, Save the Health Care Act."

He writes: “Sure, the health care law is not perfect, but it would cut the nation’s long-term fiscal imbalance by a quarter and reduce the projected deficit within Medicare by three-quarters. That may seem fanciful, given how distorted the public discussion has become. But that’s what the projections show, as long as Congress sticks to its guns and the Obama administration does a good job carrying out the provisions of the law.”

However, Orszag's article amounts to little more than wishful thinking. Using Congressional Budget Office (CBO) data, the chart above shows that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 have left the cost curve of federal healthcare spending virtually unchanged over the next 25 years.

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Quantitative Easing Explained

School Choice in Canada: Lessons for America

by Mark Milke

In Canada, the province of Alberta has long encouraged school choice. Historically, Alberta has had two school systems between which parents may choose: the “public” system and a “separate” system. Other Alberta choices include charter, private, and French-language schools. Homeschooling is encouraged and supported by the provincial government, and “blended” programs are available where children can take some courses at home and others at school. This large variety of educational choice has led to positive results. International test results have placed Alberta students among the world’s top performers, including immigrant children who fare equal to or better than non-immigrant children. In Alberta, parents expect—and have—a wide variety of educational options for how to educate their children, a policy outcome that American states should emulate.

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John F Kennedy Warning America and The World

Uncertainty = Business Freeze = No Investment, No Jobs

Humanists' 'holiday' ads attack God & Bible

by Cathy Lynn Grossman

The American Humanist Association is going for the ugly -- in the name of no God.

Their newly announced 200,000 advertising campaign ditches last year's fairly benign good-without-God approach and rips into the nastiest quotes it can cherry-pick from Scripture. It's an attempt, says their web site...

"... to challenge the intolerant view that atheist and agnostic humanists can't be good without Bible derived morality. We're taking a hard look at what is included in religious texts."

So they'll contrast this passage from Hosea 13:16...

"The people of Samaria must bear their guilt because they have rebelled against their God. They will fall by the sword; their little ones will be dashed to the ground; their pregnant woman ripped open."

with a quote from Albert Einstein (and other "non-theist luminaries such as Katharine Hepburn and Richard Dawkins").

"I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the object of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own -- a God, in short, who is modeled after human frailty."

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