Obama has been President more than 100 days. Why do I still have to take my shoes off at the airport?
Cf. This interview with Bruce Shneier, Safe But Also Sorry from which I learn that the War on Shampoo will be over soon
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by Michael Froomkin
Laurie Silvers & Mitchell Rubenstein Distinguished Professor of Law
University of Miami School of Law
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“Obama has been President more than 100 days. Why do I still have to take my shoes off at the airport?”
I could not agree more. We have nothing to fear. It is clear that the Middle East has been transformed. Why just the other day, Iran launched a celebratory toy rocket in honor of this new era of peace and understanding. Likewise, Hamas launched celebratory toy rockets into Israel as tokens of peace and tranquility. This all occurred just days after Obama’s meeting with Netanyahu, wherein Obama demanded that certain areas of the Middle East be kept absolutely Judenrein.
Particularly in light of Obama’s Judenrein policy, the peoples of Middle East origins now love us and we have nothing to fear. I think it wise to take the illegally detained, innocent and framed men being held at Guantanimo and train them to be TSA screeners at the airports.
However, as you know, we are under very serious threats from domestic extremists. Janet Neopolotano recently issued a report on this, you may have missed it.
Supposedly, there are actually people who believe that abortion should be illegal? Can you believe it? These people actually believe that Roe v. Wade, a UNANIMOUS decision by the Supreme Court, was wrongly decided. Wow, those people must be serious wackos and I definitely wouldn’t want to sit next to one on a plane. Further, there apparently are people who do not like paying taxes! And of course, veterans returning from war have “combat skills” so we really need to keep them off planes too. So sadly, we still need to take off our shoes because Obama’s department of homeland security believes that conservative Americans aka right-wing extremists are a threat to us all.
Being the anglophile you are, I am sure you see the great wisdom in the approach the British have taken, which is to simply ban right wing extremists, such as nationally syndicated radio talk show hosts, from the country. Maybe if we just round up all people with political beliefs contrary to Obama’s, put them in detainment camps, then we wouldn’t need airport screenings.
Now that Obama has completely cured the problem (well really the myth) of Middle East terrorism (we all know Bush engineered 9/11), I am sure he will soon find a cure for the looming threat of homegrown right-wing extremist terrorism, particularly the threat from those who have the audacity to believe that a fetus is a living being that society benefits by protecting. I mean come on, such lunacy! What can be done with those kind of fanatics?!
So sadly, we will have to remove our shoes until Obama solves that one.
Maybe you need your own blog? My point, of course, was that making people take off shoes at the airport adds almost nothing to security, and is a disaster from a cost/benefit point of view. The new administration is rolling back many of the idiocies of the last one, why not this too?
I think the risk of a foreign terrorist attack remains about what it was: small but real. (The risk of domestic terrorism was at most relevant times (other, perhaps, then when the President ignored a report that said “Bin Laden planning to attack United States”) larger than the risk of foreign terrorism, and it’s even larger now.)
Yeah the shoes thing is of extremely limited tactical value, and the process creates an atmosphere of fear and control.
Bush and Cheney liked that; no one else does.
In the voice of Homer Simpson (while drooling): “mmm…fear and control”
H.L. Mencken said, “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” Doesn’t that explain it?
“endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
I guess Earl’s mommy still tucks him in at night. She tells him Al Queda, Hamas, Hizbollah, etc. are all just make believe people on the tv shows mommy and daddy like to watch. There is no Iran, no North Korea, no China, or so mommy says. Earl then sleeps like a baby, enjoying the safety of his warm blanket.
Right. Because that is how it is.
Either you support every single security procedure ever invented by an idiot bureaucrat, no matter how worthless, or you love terrorists and/or don’t think they even exist.
There is nothing in the middle. Nothing!!
Nutshell summary of the comment below: “he who sacrifices freedom for security deserves neither”
USA and democracy = majority rule balanced against personal freedom. There is nothing in the declaration of independence, the constitution, the federalist papers or any of the documents or philosophies that create the foundation of this nation that say that safety comes first. On the contrary, ours is a nation forged on the principal that we would rather die violent and bloody deaths rather than give up freedom and self determination.
If you want government that strips of your rights in the name of safety, the government and society envisioned by our founding father’s is not the one for you.
Democracy (as devised at the founding of our nation) is neither efficient nor pretty. It is a system intended to protect the people from their government. This is mostly done by limiting the government’s role despite greater risk to the people from other forces.
Effectively, US democracy is (ideally) putting into practice the theory that the world is a big bad place, and that we would rather take our chances against forces that MAY screw us rather than against a government that WILL screw us.
Just my $0.02.
Please excuse typos and poor grammar in my above comment. It is early and I am an anonymous commenter trying to zealously advocate for my clients and talk smack on the intertubes all at the same time. It is not at easy as it looks.
Let me just say this. I’d like to see any terrorist take me down with a box cutter. Bring it on sucka.