US Security: When Grandma --- and She's Not a Muslim --- is Strip-Searched, Then It's TIme to Protest (Serwer)
Saturday, November 20, 2010 at 6:32
The Transportation Security Agency's new airport passenger-screening procedures, which force airline passengers to submit to a full-body scan or an invasive frisk, is turning Dick Cheney’s biggest fans into latter-day Ben Franklins.
The conservative, torture-friendly Washington Times, declared that "a balance must be struck between reasonable security measures and the maintenance of a free society." Abu Ghraib was a fraternity prank, but getting frisked at the airport is a sign of, to quote the Times, "Big Sister's police state." Hatred of the TSA makes for strange bedfellows, with some conservatives now sounding like card-carrying members of the American Civil Liberties Union.
"We're giving Americans two unpalatable options now," says ACLU legislative counsel Chris Calabrese. "They can either submit to a virtual strip search or a very aggressive grope. We've never seen that before."