TSORon, TSA began life with enormous goodwill and support from the traveling public. Way back when, most of us thought it was a fine idea to upgrade the professionalism level we saw from random rent-a-cops at checkpoints -- especially post-9/11. You didn't start out hated; you made yourself hated -- by refusing to explain yourself; by tolerating an out-of-control workforce; by dodging all accountability; by perpetrating terrible abuses on innocent citizens; and by denying they occur.

TSA basically made the bed it lies in today. It's virtually the only arm of government that doesn't set out to curry public support; even the IRS tries to explain itself, and relate to taxpayers. Instead TSA treats every criticism as an act of treason, and threatens or smears its critics.

Your post is a fine example of this -- you suggest that any TSA opponent is a traitor. TSA is a totalitarian agency operating in a democratic society. (It's depressing to see the substantial American appetite for totalitarianism revealed in peoples' slavish expressions of support for extreme TSA actions.)

The mismatch cannot persist. Either TSA eventually succumbs to the customary rules of American democracy, or the US slides toward totalitarianism. The comparisons some here make to East Germany's Stasi are a little hyperbolic, but in point of fact TSA demands just such an operating brief for itself: the power to set up shop anywhere, make citizens do anything, and arrest all critics. No enemy real or imagined justifies this.

It's incredibly difficult for TSA to claim it's "defending the homeland" when its very operating principles strike at the heart of American values.

Happy Thanksgiving, TSORon. Remember, the pilgrims were fleeing royalist tyranny. I think they'd be heartbroken at how much political tyranny now stains the new world they risked everything to reach.