Many things done by the Obama administration have mystified me since they appeared to be bound to alienate great swaths of the population. However, I have never seen a policy of this administration more likely to create a great public outcry than the current policy of the Transportation Security Administration that all passengers must submit to full body scans or physical pat downs. The full body scan produces a naked image of the traveler.
Many people are offended by this, and hence we have nuns subjected to pat downs. This three year old girl being subjected to a pat down shows the joys that await parents if they do not want to have their small children subjected to a full body scan.
Pilots and air crews have complained about being subject to scanning or pat downs.
The uproar on this issue is just beginning. Just wait until holiday fliers are put through this next week!
For a marginal increase in security on passenger planes, the Obama administration is willing to infuriate an ever-growing body of people. It makes absolutely no sense to me. Intelligent security at airports would target the suspicious for this type of treatment but not all passengers. Of course that would involve passenger profiling and be politically incorrect. Son of a gun, I guess I do understand what motivates this one-size-fits-all-passengers policy after all!
I find it interesting that we’re using language singling out Obama on this. Now, I’m as happy to blame Obama for things as the next dog, but let’s call a spade a spade, here. Obama is just following in his predecessor’s administration’s footsteps. Do you really think that A) Obama’s DHS could have rolled this chicanery out into our airports had Bush’s DHS not already eroded the 4th Amendment; or B) that this step would not have been executed by the aforementioned Bush – had the technology been available at the opportune moment – or by a theoretical President McCain?
Wolfie, I guarantee that the Bush administration would never have done this. Treating all passengers in this fashion is a political landmine and they would have recognized it as such. I expected the Obama administration to act as Leftist ideologues. What has been unexpected to me is that they also consistently act like bloody fools.
The viewer comments on that first video were really depressing. Actually, the whole video was kind of depressing.
See, I really don’t see how the Bush administration was adept at avoiding political landmines. What stood out to me was that they, more than any other administration in my lifetime, was fine with treating the population of this country as if they were all potentially suicide bombers. Guilty until proven innocent. Never mind that almost every single measure taken to curtail individual liberty and privacy since 09/11 has also been more about theatrics than actual security. In that regard, I just look at Obama as Baby Bush.
Could they be trying to keep people from moving around the country? I don’t have any need to travel anyway, but this stuff sure doesn’t make me want to start planning a trip.
Not looking forward to the trip to Kit’s great-grandmother’s this Christmas. We’ll be among the long, long line of “opt outs” for the technological strip-search. (Not just because of the whole “see through your clothes” thing; there’s way too much cancer in our family for me to be cool with extra x-rays.)
On a meta-note, I was amused that my reader had this comic right below this post on the feed.
[…] to Instapundit. As noted in my post Full Body Stupidity, the wrath of the public is beginning to be roused by the full body scans or intrusive pat downs […]