The ACLU issued the following message about the Transportation Security Administration, and that agency’s latest intrusion on Americans’ liberties. In the pursuit of a false security, this agency distorts civil society, badgers citizens, and particularly terrifies children.

Note, also, the damage these agents inflict: they speak to children in ways beguiling and undermining of a child’s sensible reluctance to avoid physical contact with strangers. The TSA contends that they need to prepare for threats that run counter to our societal norms (their awkward term), but in doing so the TSA – itself – undermines our societal norms.

The TSA’s out-of-control security measures have shocked us before. But this latest story is undeniable proof that we need a change: They frisked a 6 year-old who was left confused and in tears because she thought she did something wrong.

Aviation security requires striking a delicate balance between the personal safety of passengers and their right to privacy. Unfortunately, the TSA has developed increasingly invasive methods of searching passengers – methods that are clearly encroaching on our rights.

We must rein in these invasive, out-of-control searches and implement security measures that ensure passenger privacy.

Tell Congress: We need some sanity when it comes to security.

More than 70 airports around the country are now using controversial body scanners – also known as “naked scanners.” These machines use low-dose radiation to produce strikingly graphic images of passengers’ bodies, essentially taking a naked picture as passengers pass through security checkpoints.

Yes, authorities at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) say you can opt out of the naked scan. But doing so will subject you to new and highly invasive manual searches of your body, including your breasts, buttocks and inner thighs.

The TSA has subjected passengers to “enhanced” pat-downs, which have resulted in reports of people feeling humiliated and traumatized, and in some cases, reports comparing their psychological impact to sexual assaults.

Please take action: Tell Congress to rein in the TSA.

All of us have a right to travel without such crude invasions of our privacy. Thanks for standing with us.

Sincerely,

Anthony D. Romero
Executive Director, ACLU
ACLU, 125 Broad Street, 18th Floor, New York, NY 10004

Sources:
“Kentucky parents say TSA agent frisked their 6-year-old daughter at the New Orleans airport,” The Washington Post, April 13, 2011.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/kentucky-parents-say-tsa-agent-frisked-their-6-year-old-daughter-at-the-new-orleans-airport/2011/04/13/AFbuwOVD_story.html

I have never supported a ‘big-drinking’ culture. Alcohol is best consumed moderately, enjoyed leisurely, with agreeable company.

Wisconsin has seen more than her share of drinking tragedies, made far worse by stubborn insistence that, if only enforcement becomes severe enough, we’ll be able to stop further tragedies.

We won’t. No level of enforcement tried or seriously proposed has stopped, or would stop, further misfortune. Our present way generates grand headlines but no permanent gains.

There’s another problem: we insist that one cannot drink until twenty-one, but can fight and die for America at eighteen. It’s a shameful contradiction between the contention that hundreds of millions are too immature to drink, but over a million of that number are mature enough to risk their lives in defense of this republic.

Glenn Harlan Reynolds, of Instapundit, makes the case for a lower drinking age:

Along with joining the military, 18-year-olds can vote, marry, sign contracts….but forbidding them to drink on campus because they’re deemed insufficiently mature to appreciate the risks….

To be fair, over 130 college presidents, as part of something called the Amethyst Initiative, have called for an end to the drinking age of 21. They note that the higher drinking age doesn’t stop college students from drinking, as anyone who’s been on a college campus in the past several decades knows. It does drive drinking out of bars and restaurants and into dorm rooms and fraternity houses, where there is less supervision from the non-intoxicated and less encouragement for moderation….

Defenders of the status quo claim that highway deaths have fallen since the drinking age was raised to 21 from 18, but those claims obscure the fact that this decline merely continued a trend that was already present before the drinking age changed – and one that involved every age group, not merely those 18-21. Research by economist Jeffrey A. Miron and lawyer Elina Tetelbaum indicates that a drinking age of 21 doesn’t save lives but does promote binge drinking and contempt for the law.

See, Glenn Harlan Reynolds: Old Enough to Fight, Old Enough to Drink – WSJ.com.