I told someone this weekend that one of two things will happen in 2011. And believe me, I hope I'm wrong about this. One, the United States will collapse, much like the USSR did in 1991. Or two, the country remains but will be radically altered.

Look at the political landscape, even with the untrained eye, and you can catch a glimpse of the change ahead. President Obama got upstaged by the last Democratic POTUS, Bill Clinton, in a jaw dropping news conference…

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Storms, not airport security, slow holiday travel

By JAMES MacPHERSON Associated Press The Associated Press

Thursday, November 25, 2010 7:05 AM EST



http://www.charter.net/news/read.php?rip_id=%3CD9JN2JIO1%40news.ap.org%3E&ps=1011&page=1



BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — A planned boycott of airport security scanners was a bust, but holiday travelers in the… Continue

EPIC has filed the opening brief in EPIC v. DHS, No, 10-1157, a case that challenges the unilateral decision of the TSA to make body scanners the primary screening technique in U.S. airports. Three frequent air travelers are joining EPIC in the lawsuit: security expert Bruce Schneier, human rights activist Chip Pitts, and the Council on American-Islamic Relations legal counsel Nadhira Al-Khalili. The Petitioners have brought claims under the Administrative Procedure Act, the Privacy Act, the… Continue

So let me see if I have this straight...



If I fly, I can be randomly chosen to go through a scanner that would, if run through a negative enhancer, would show most details of my nakedness.



If I choose not to be scanned, I can be sexually assaulted by a TSA agent who does not change gloves despite touching the genitals of many of the same gender, thus increasing the chance of catching an sexual disease.



If I choose to do neither, first you, the TSA, I would be… Continue

Wonder what the powers that be would do if WE as AMERICANS wrote up a petition that says WE officially release them of any and all obligation they feel they have to be our daddy and keep us safe, If they will recognize that WE have certain Natural RIGHTS. Among those are the right to DEFEND ourselves, the right to obtain and freely carry arms and to travel unobstructed. Then WE announce to the whole world that Americans are now ARMED and if they'd like to commit any acts of terror to please… Continue

U.S. Rep. Rush Holt

(Washington, D.C.) – U.S. Rep. Rush Holt, a scientist and the Chairman of the House Select Intelligence Oversight Panel, Friday wrote the Administrator of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), reiterating his concerns about the use of body imaging technology, notably about potential health effects and the…

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The day that I write this is the 47th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the then sitting president of the United States. And, as many argue, perhaps the last true POTUS. The nine men to occupy the throne since have been figureheads, there to do the bidding of the shadow government. The muscle provided by the military industrial complex, the finances provided by the Federal Reserve.



We now have, in this fall of 2010, a total assault on what America used to be. Trips… Continue

The time of 9:50am ET came yesterday, and went. The world is, at least for now, still in one piece.



It is easy on one hand, as I was last night on my Facebook page to mock and be critical of that "rickety time machine" Cliff High and George Ure speak of. (I linked what I called a "fail" to a skit done by Rowan Atkinson and the late Peter Cook some 30 years ago about the end of times.) We live in an age of instant… Continue

WASHINGTON – The new head of the Transportation Security Administration say he's giving 10,000 of the agency's employees access to secret intelligence information to better enable them to detect threats and stop terrorists.

Read more:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100923/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/us_tsa_secret_clearances

ACLU questions propriety of 'enhanced patdown' of passengers at Boston, Las Vegas airports

http://www.latimes.com/sns-ap-us-airport-security,0,4202487.story

BOSTON (AP) — The…

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by Chris Morran

You have to hand it to the TSA screeners at Philadelphia International Airport. Not only will they look through your stuff to

make sure you're not going to go all explosiony on the plane, they'll

also bring in the cops to call your husband to double check you haven't

embezzled money from him.

The Philadelphia Inquirer has the story of a 43-year-old woman who feels the TSA crossed a line when they went from checking her luggage…

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By Cory Doctorow

Philadelphia TSA screeners forced the developmentally delayed, four-year-old son of a Camden, PA police officer to remove his leg-braces and wobble through a checkpoint, despite the fact that their procedure calls for such a case to be handled through a swabbing in a private room. When the police…

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By Daniel Tencer

The ACLU has filed a lawsuit on behalf of a college student who was arrested by the TSA and detained for five hours over a set of Arabic-language flash cards he was carrying.

Nick George, a student at Pomona College in California, was…

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By Kim Zetter



Two bloggers received home visits from Transportation Security Administration agents Tuesday after they published a new TSA directive that revises screening procedures and puts new restrictions on passengers in the wake of a recent bombing attempt by the so-called underwear bomber.



Special agents from the TSA’s Office of Inspection interrogated two U.S. bloggers, one of them an established travel columnist, and served them each with a civil subpoena demanding… Continue