Originally Posted by VideoPaul

The Transportation Security Administration, the largest federal jobs program wince the WPA, which wasted $11 billion dollars in the 1940s when $11 billion dollars was real money, is there for public reations and to make you FEEL safer while actually having little if any impact on real security issues.

Spending over $5 billion dollars this year alone, they confiscate form passengers intert substances like water, body search elderly nuns and forcibly inspect your shoes for explosives by uing x-ray machine that by their own admission cannot detect explosives.

While many employees simply stand around grriping about their schedules and how long it is until their next break, a very short handful of TSA employees with intelligence and real security accumen perform their duties while knowing full well their efforts are largely window dressing.

Stung by revelations of spendng a lot of money on lavish "awards ceremonies" and "retreats" at posh resort locations, the TSA's public relations--oh, let's call it what it is, "marketing--department trots out soccer mome who travel once every two years on camera saying"ANYTHING for safety" as a wya to justify what amounts to taxpayer funded harrassment of taxpayers.

Keepers of top secret no-fly and top-secret watch lists that American citizens find themselves on with no way to get off or even to find out what got them on the list in the first place, the TSA circumnavigates the basic American legal concepts of "due process" and "presumed innocence" while depriving these citizens of the basic American freedoms of movement and the right to confront their accusers and clear their good names in the absence of actual evdance against them.

Arguing with a TSA employee will get your travel for that day cancelled, further argument gets you arrested. Their employees, I estimate 70% of whom could not pass a police civil service written exam or physical agility test and some of whom managed to slip through basic criminal background checks, operate above the law in the name of "National Security".

The TSA is further evidence that this great country has given up essential libery for a little temporary security, despite Benjamin Franklin's stern adminotions against doing exactly this. They operate in an atmosphere of absolute political correctness so as not to infuriate the far to the left or the special interest lobbying groups that support the rights of islamofascis groups and refuse to denounce their terrorist activities while at the same time screechiugn like wounded birds about how they are so offended by anyone daring to draw any kind of connection parallel between islam and islamofascist terrorism.

The TSA will continue to spend your money to harrass you and keep the deadly chemical known as "Dihydrogen monoxide" out of aircraft cabins, but only if it's been brought on board by you. It will take a sea change in Washington, D.C. and a plurality of citizens bent on the absurd pursuit of their basic rights to change this buearucracy in any real way.

--PP