Freedom of Information documents show the TSA ignoring the radiation dangers of its body scanners.
The more states the merrier! Idaho could follow Texas in pushing for an anti-TSA groping bill.
The day of reckoning beckons: The shocking true size of our nation’s debt.
Add it all up, and total US debt actually exceeds 900% of GDP. That’s somewhere in excess of $120 trillion. We are beginning to talk real money here.
The Congressional Budget Office [CBO] also contains bad news for those who believe that we can fix this problem simply by cutting “fraud, waste and abuse.” As CBO points out, the projected growth in the debt “is attributable entirely to increases in spending on several large mandatory programs: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and (to a lesser extent) insurance subsidies that will be provided through [Obamacare].” There is simply no way to deal with our debt problems without reforming those entitlement programs.
Finally, the CBO report makes it clear that we have a debt problem because spending is too high, not because taxes are too low. In fact, even though taxes are currently at a near historic low as a proportion of the economy, that is largely a result of the recession. If the economy returns to normal growth rates (a big “if”), federal revenues will not only rise, but will actually be higher than the postwar average percentage of GDP by the end of the decade. In fact, this will happen even if the Bush tax cuts are extended and the Alternative Minimum Tax AMT continues to be patched.
Freedom on the march! A 95-year-old woman sick with leukemia was forced to remove her adult diaper during a TSA search last weekend.
Two reporters were arrested yesterday by police for simply taking photos at a public taxicab commission meeting in DC.
I guess the first amendment means something different inside the Beltway.
Freedom of speech alert: A New Mexico judge has ordered an Alamogordo man to take down his anti-abortion billboard.
Doesn’t this make you feel safer? Another TSA worker has been arrested on suspicion of stealing.
A Vietnam veteran has been threatened with legal action for the American flag outside his home.
Dutch politician Geert Wilders was acquitted today of hate speech for his criticisms of Islam.
Not surprisingly, the Islamic whiners who never seem to notice the tens of thousands killed by Islamic terrorists were very unhappy about the ruling.
Farid Azarkan of the SMN association of Moroccans in the Netherlands said he feared the acquittal could further split Dutch society and encourage others to repeat Wilders’s comments. “You see that people feel more and more supported in saying that minorities are good for nothing,” Azarkan said. “Wilders has said very extreme things about Muslims and Moroccans, so when will it ever stop? Some will feel this as a sort of support for what they feel and as justification.”
Minorities groups said they would now take the case to the United Nations Human Rights Committee, arguing the ruling meant the Netherlands had failed to protect ethnic minorities from discrimination. “The acquittal means that the right of minorities to remain free of hate speech has been breached. We are going to claim our rights at the U.N.,” said Mohamed Rabbae of the National Council for Moroccans.
Of course, the murder of innocents by Islamic radicals has nothing to do with the distrust people have of Islam. That’s totally irrelevant, and must be ignored.
Police thugs: A Rochester woman was arrested by police for filming them from her own property. Watch the video below and tell me if it doesn’t make your blood boil. The cops who did this should be fired.
Texas anti-groping bill against the TSA moves forward with changes. In related news, under pressure the head of the TSA agreed yesterday that it should modify its patdowns of children.
Unfortunately, the changes being introduced to the Texas bill will make it nothing more than a symbolic act. Similarly, the TSA’s so-called modification of its policy towards children really changes nothing, as they will continue to grope and violate the rights of everyone else.
The day of reckoning looms: The Congressional Budget Office today reported that unless something drastic is done, the national debt will exceed the size of the entire U.S. economy by 2021.
President Barack Obama’s complete list of historic firsts.
Take some time to look at the list closely, including the links that back up each “first.” You might remain skeptical of some of the stories, but the weight of numbers is surely suggestive of the kind of president Obama really is.
Big Brother rules! King County, Washington, has voted to require life vests for swimmers.
[The law] applies to people intertubing, rafting, using a surfboard, canoe or kayak. Swimmers or people wading more than 5 feet from shore or in water more than 4 feet deep would also have to wear life vests. The new ordinance does not apply to people at designated public beaches or for people who are skin diving.
Talk about intolerance: Atheists demand the removal of a sign honoring seven firefighters who died on 9/11 because it includes the word “heaven.”
Doesn’t this make you feel safer? Theft by TSA employees of passenger valuables has become a nationwide problem.
According to TSA records, press reports, and court documents . . . some 500 TSA officers . . . have been fired or suspended for stealing from passenger luggage since the agency’s creation in November of 2001. The airports servicing New York City—John F. Kennedy, LaGuardia, and Newark Liberty—harbor the most flagrant offenders, but virtually no city in the nation is safe from the TSA’s sticky fingers.
In 2009, a half dozen TSA agents at Miami International Airport were charged with grand theft after boosting an iPod, bottles of perfume, cameras, a GPS system, a Coach purse, and a Hewlett Packard Mini Notebook from passengers’ luggage. Travelers passing through the airport’s checkpoints reported as many as 1,500 items stolen, the majority of which were never recovered.
In May of this year alone, TSA agents were arrested on the suspicion of theft at airports in Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Chicago.
The legal store of stolen objects.
The National Speleological Society has responded in strong opposition [pdf] to the demand by the Center for Biological Diversity that all caves on public land be closed to protect bats.
Calling for blanket cave closures across the U.S. is unnecessary, unenforceable, and counterproductive. While cave closures on some federal lands have been implemented, particularly in the eastern U. S., there is no evidence that this action has done anything to contain [white nose syndrome] (WNS). Most people working on WNS understand that bat to bat transmission is overwhelmingly the primary method of transmission, and administrative closing of caves and mines does nothing to prevent that.
Busybodies forever at work: San Francisco’s Animal Control and Welfare Commission has recommended the city ban the sale of goldfish, tropical fish and guppies in its borders.
It’s all about power and control, not safety: The TSA has decided to block any further private companies from providing airport screening.
An Israeli group is threatening legal action against Inmarsat for aiding the Gaza flotilla supporting Hamas.
Don’t you feel safer? TSA agents confiscate toy hammer.
The TSA took away one toy hammer, but they were still able to take another toy hammer on board the airplane. How did that happen? Drew’s mother, always prepared, had another one in her backpack and that backpack passed through security with no problem.
The abuse of power: The U.S. Department of Education used a SWAT team to break down a man’s door and hold him and his three children, aged 3, 7, and 11, for six hours, all because his wife had defaulted on her student loans.
A Newark TSA supervisor has been sentenced to prison for bribery and aiding the theft of passengers.
So how is his action any different than what Congress does?
Fiddling while Rome burns: An Iranian atomic bomb may be only eight weeks away.
Repeal it! The right to issue waivers to Obamacare by the Health and Human Services administration (HHS) appears to be illegal.
Language granting HHS that power was never in the original law. Instead, through new rules and regulations, HHS gave itself the power last summer using a broad interpretation of certain parts of the law.
The abuse of power: Cruise passengers tell of seven-hour security “revenge” nightmare, forced on them by U.S. immigration officials.
But when a handful of them questioned whether the lengthy security checks at the port were strictly necessary for a group of largely elderly travellers officials were not amused. Although they had already been given advance clearance for multiple entries to the country during their trip, all 2,000 passengers were made to go through full security checks in a process which took seven hours to complete.
