TSA

Lots of uproar over the pat-downs and nude screenings at the airports.

There is also a curious juxtaposition of the dems and republicans, with the dems crying out for protecting the "police" and the republicans worrying about "unconstitutional searches". In reality, there is nothing mysterious in the positions taken - merely a case of each side acting politically with the democrats backing their president and the republicans staking out the ground of the opposition. Principles are not at issue, only power and popularity.

Frankly, the entire argument is ridiculous.

There are no constitutional issues in play. The Constitution protects contracts. Buying a ticket to fly is entering into a contract for services. The searches and scans are part of the contract...you agreed to them when you paid the price for a ticket. If you don't want to deal with the security, don't fly! You would do the same for any other product you thought was substandard, wouldn't you? If you find the security process offensive, subscribe to alternate means. If the ailines revenue declines enough, they will get the changes made post-haste.

Are these procedures intentional?

Of course they are.

I am not going to dump on the TSA workers as I have seen some do. Most of them are just like any other blue-collar worker in our neighborhood. There are a few cretins, twisted freaks and ulterior motivations, but most are people trying to pay their bills and get home on time.

Inherent in the character of the TSA work-force resides the problem as well.

The agents are not well-trained, experienced security and protection experts. It also appears that Homeland Security has no interest in providing them the training and skills to make them experts. So what the government lacks in quality, it makes up in quantity and brute force.

Tens of thousands of untrained, unskilled people will not make a quality security force.

What it will make, however, is a fertile field for groupthink (a new thin blue line).

Are the TSA agents unionized? If not, bet they soon will be...and what do we know know about government employee unions?

The only way to kill the monster is to stop feeding it.