explosive sniffer. hmmm. too bad it wasn't drug sniffing you wanted. I hear Charlie Sheen is available.

...and now the AK State Senate weighs in:

http://www.seattlepi.com/local/6420a...rt_search.html

Another state asserting its sovereignty over Federal authority.

Sadly, these are just resolutions. AK needs legislation making invasive pat downs the equivalent of sexual assault such as PA and NH and, hopefully, NJ is working on.

Would such legislation actually work? I mean, look how well Jim Crow worked in the antebellum South. The Feds stepped in and preempted local laws then. Why wouldn't they do so again?

That's been discussed previously in the NH legislation thread. It might not work - but it shows more seriousness concerning the issue than a resolution.

Please correct me if I'm wrong:

Here's how I see it. Regarding Jim Crow, the Fed was stepping in to enforce laws which GRANTED rights. The same is true of Roe v. Wade. The Fed has made abortion a right of it's citizens. Many states have tried to curb as much as they can of that right, but can't ban it outright.

In this case the Fed is USURPING rights via the TSA. The states should be able to constitutionally declare those federal practices invalid.

The Constitution spells out rights that we have. Technically, no one can take them away. The Fed protects us from the states trying to take the rights away and the states protect us from the Fed trying to take the rights away. In theory, obviously.

I am not a lawyer, have no legal training whatsoever, etc., etc. This just seems like an exercise in logic to me.

Depends on one's perspective. From the perspective of racist segregationists in the Deep South, the Feds were stepping in to deny them their rights to free association. From the perspective of just about everyone else, the Feds were stepping in to grant rights to racial minorities to be treated equally before the law.

(And I'm not a lawyer either, so my reasoning is also pretty suspect.)

I agree that passing a law is certainly stronger than passing a non-binding resolution ... but if the Feds step in and nullify the law, they both end up in the same place. Doesn't mean it shouldn't be done, of course ... but I'm not going to start celebrating just yet.

The Constitution spells out limits on government.

bolding mine
Just a quibble, but the Constitution does not enumerate our rights. It limits the power of the federal government vis vis the states and the citizens of the states. The Bill of Rights within the constititution gives people the impression that you have, but it is a false one.
The powers of the federal government were intended to be limited and FEW. The rights of the citizens and states were relatively unlimited.

This situation is now reversed. We are living under an oppression that the founding states were worried about when they debated on whether to have a federal government at all. Never would they have created this monster if they thought the end result was the strip searching of people's bodies, and sex organs and all being fondled by agencies of the federal government purely on their whim. NEVER.

In fact the Bill of Rights originally was seen as redundant given that those rights were guaranteed by English common & constitutional law going back to the Magna Carta.

Fast forward another hundred years and we see that the English have devolved to abandon constitutional restraints in favor of parliamentary supremacy. The only constitutional constraint on the UK today is the EU charter, and that might well turn out to be a paper tiger.

The state bills if passed would give legitamcy to the police arresting TSA employees. They can actually do that now but most side with the TSA (even to the point of one pax posting police told him Constitution doesn't apply in an airport. The LEO who responded to Cheech offfered to arrest the TSO but said cheech would miss his flight and have to return for trial (and Cheech didn't even object to the pat down itsef, just that rules weren't followed while doing it.). Doesn't matter if court throws cases out, media coverage might wake up the unwashed masses to what is going on. Also, when done PROPERLY it could be debated whether or not the the pat downs are actually sexual assaults. Problem is, seems not very many know how to do it properly from all the complaints. Even Pistole said there should not be touching bare skin, hands inside underwear or genital rubbing. Someone doing those things are acting outside the job and seems to me would be subject to arrest without government job immunity.

Oops. That's what I meant by "protect our rights". I guess what I should have said was something along the lines of "protect us from others trying to take away our rights."

Thanks for the correction.