Left this comment on "Open Salon" this morning to "Geraldine Ferraro’s Campaign Stop from Hell"

Left this comment on "Open Salon" this morning at http://open.salon.com/blog/wild_ginger/2011/03/29/geraldine_ferraros_campaign_stop_from_hell. Will be interesting to see if it stays up there -- which is sort of my point. :-)

The left does not need to shout down the other side of the abortion issue at the rowdy physical level. The left shouts down the other side -- by shutting it out -- at the more sophisticated media, legislative and above all judicial levels.

Media: never even hear the issue framed as the "abortion issue" -- it's the "woman's right to choose" -- never even hear the other side at all.

Legislative: a year and a half in jail (FACE) plus crushing law suits (RICO!) for passive, non-violent resistance demonstrations in front of abortion clinics (sorry Gandhi and MLK).

Above all judicial: the Roe majority threw out 46 seriously enforced state laws with what I choose to call a "consensus test": "... may not, just by adopting one theory of life, override the rights of the pregnant woman that are at stake."

Easy to dismiss the theories of life the decision consulted: three were theological plus viability and quickening. Roe's writer could was "not in a position to determine when life begins" at four weeks overdue -- but I am sure he would no trouble at twelve weeks early arrival.

Going by the real -- as in honest -- medical consensus -- not "viability is the medical focus" -- Roe's writer might have discerned life's very certain beginning somewhere between 14 to 20 weeks. One week under which "consensus" he could have discovered what Roe so busily talked around: possible human life as an undeniably compelling state interest.

The high court could hardly have picked a week at which the possible life was no longer compelling: too nakedly legislative.

Prenatal personhood? What will the high court say when fetuses may be removed overnight for medical procedures and returned to the womb? Will it continue to hold that inalienable rights begin at birth? Oh, all of a sudden the left is all strict constructionist.

New Hampshire's Don't Touch My Junk Bill

When entering land borders from Canada and Mexico we are not asked to choose between naked scan or genital frisk – likely unconstitutional without at least reasonable cause. Why does the TSA put us through an underwear search getting off intercontinental flights? Are they afraid we are going to blow up American taxicabs?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkRPS0pSScQ

And (perhaps most unreasonable of all – with so much unreasonable it is difficult to know where to start) why must we be subjected to all over, private area gropes when a scanner spots one thing in one pocket? Why may we not merely remove one thing from one pocket and at most go back through the scanner?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLpOcEtsElI&feature=player_embedded (Note pubescent female at end of video posing for her naked rendition to be remotely viewed by male agent shown at beginning.)

Suppose scanners were in use in lockups only – and a story came out that males guards viewed females – maybe even a “backroom story” of males gathering around to make comparisons? Suppose the same stories came out about a juvenile (under 18) lockup?
http://www.dvorak.org/blog/2010/11/15/editorial-of-the-day-on-tsa-horndogs-heads-up-got-a-cutie-for-you/

Privacy? Our courts will release a serial killer – to kill again and again -- because of one illegal intrusion by police way back at the beginning of the investigation. I don’t agree with the exclusionary rule but our courts certainly don’t put whether we live (safety) way out front of how we live (privacy) … unless you mention airliners. (Larry Eyler lived one block north of my 1633 Chase, Chicago apartment.)
http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/serial_killers/predators/eyler/freedom_6.html

Danger? 90,000,000 to 0 – the odds of getting on a domestically originating flight with a suicide bomber since 9/11/01. If you are on the soil of the “Great Satan” why try to sneak a few ounces of explosive on a plane when you can get a couple of thousand pounds of fertilizer together on land? But, what about the guy who planned to take down a dozen foreign originating 747s in one day? When he was here he actually carried out the same scale attack -- on the ground: his bomb in the WTC garage was intended to make one tower fall against the other bringing both down.

What protects us from suicide bombers is living in the USA not in Iraq – and our security services stopping them before they start. Lots of experts tell us that any capable terrorist would circumvent what they call today’s “security theatre” (I’m not even going to get into that). The real and present danger? A Cornell study added 1,200 traffic fatalities to Bid Laden’s 9/11 score due Americans driving to avoid flying. How many hundreds or thousands of traffic deaths a year may airport security's new, enhanced sexual intrusiveness add to his score?
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2010/11/the_tsa_is_literally_killing_a.html?f=most-commented-intel-7d5l

What is most (there’s that word again) ironic about the enhanced TSA groping technique is that it undermines -- in practice -- what the court said justified irrevocable consent to be searched (once you enter the screening area) in the first place. The court permitted preventing passengers to leave mid-search because that could allow terrorists to sample screening areas to see which they could get past undetected. But, the new groping is so obnoxious that the TSA – in practice -- seems not to have the heart to insist we may not change our mind and leave unmolested.

Bottom line, if a federal agency imposes rules that are in clear (or arguable if you will) violation of constitutional guarantees of our free way of life – that means the newly imposed rules have no legal existence -- which means any state or locality may legitimately criminalize such offenses . Privacy versus danger: let the federal Constitution decide whether state laws protecting privacy strike the more legitimate balance.

(Odd – if not useful – legal puzzlement of mine: Should TSA administrative regulations -- composed with delegated Congressional legislative power – be able to overwrite the explicit will of Congress prohibiting naked child imaging: a legislative house divided against itself? Said Congressional prohibition of such image making or distribution passed First Amendment muster precisely due to the serious harm done the child. Making and viewing of (especially opposite-sex) naked child images by either TSA or any security personnel anywhere inflict precisely the same substantive damage. Doesn't overriding the explicit intent of the body that delegated the power to you in the first place seem as incongruous as allowing pre-1789 common law to take priority over new legislation -- just a quirky puzzlement. ???)

If you touch my WIFE, I SHOULD BE able to have you arrested

If you touch my WIFE, I SHOULD BE able to have you arrested.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NI7JEA4iK4&feature=related

I would like to ask the police officer in this video -- frisking a woman's leg area (and who knows what else; the video cuts off after he goes down one side of one leg) reportedly over "expired registration" -- if he and other male officers (they all feel free to frisk women going by net searches) would be so fearful of having a less than fully frisked female (only the waist, upper side and ankles) REAR-CUFFED, STRAPPED DOWN, LOCKED IN THE BACK SEAT CAGE that he would ask a fellow officer if one were available to drive behind him to the police station so she would know she could not get away with hurting him.

I am sure he and any other male officers who heard this question would instantly laugh -- meaning there is no appreciable officer safety issue justifying what is undeniably experienced as a sexual assault by females. Everybody assumes such actions are prohibited by law -- everybody -- because only too reasonable.

If officer safety consumes them so much let them bring a wand to check for weapons before "hermetically sealing" females for the short trip to the police station. Good enough for protecting 747s from terrorists at 40,000 feet, good enough for them.

Our crazy courts have unleashed this "officer safety" nonsense on us -- without any differentiation over what constitutes what is called an immediate threat. The police have gotten so inured to the invasion that they feel free to teach male police cadets to grope the private areas of female police cadets as shown in this video -- neither video shows the the use of the back of the hand either.

http://www.booads.com/videos-stop-and-frisk-%5BW1-dcSUDPE8%5D.cfm

The probable California Highway Patrol officer in this video -- possibly incorrectly identified as LAPD -- cannot call for a female officer as easily as a street cop can. I presume it is nearly impossible. This video makes it look like every female who drives down the highway had better not leave her license home or lose her purse or she potentially faces a much more horrifying experience than she would have had she taken a plane from the airport.

The one good thing the TSA nonsense may have accomplished is alert one and all that much worse is experienced by American women and girls at the hands of police everyday. (BTW, no government or police hater here: heavy prolife and usually prowar.)

EIGHTH GRADE MATH LATE NOTE:
60-70 POLICE DIE FROM ASSAULTS ON THE JOB EVERY YEAR. IF ENDING THE "FUNNY FRISKING" OF REAR-CUFFED, STRAPPED DOWN, LOCKED IN A CAGE FEMALES FOR THE SHORT RIDE TO THE POLICE STATION ADDS 10% TO THAT RISK (UNIMAGINABLE) THAT WOULD ADD 1 EXTRA CHANCE IN 100,000 (THERE ARE 700,000 MALE LEOS) TO EVERY MALE OFFICER'S RISK: NO SAFETY JUSTIFICATION AT ALL FOR THE KIND OF FRISK SEEN IN THIS WHAT I WILL CALL "RHONDA KING" VIDEO.

DITTO FOR TERRY FRISKS: TERRY IS NOT ABOUT DISCOVERING SECRETED RAZOR BLADES -- TERRY IS ABOUT FINDING GUNS WHICH CAN BE ACCOMPLISHED WITHOUT MALE FINGERS (TRY A SIX-INCH RULER IF YOU MUST PROBE AN AREA) TOUCHING FEMALE FORMS.

FOR BOTH SITUATIONS: BRING A WAND TO WORK OFFICER! GOOD ENOUGH FOR 747S; GOOD ENOUGH FOR YOU!