After WWII my father was so proud to be able to say that an American could walk down any street with no ID and give a cop the finger if asked for "papers" like Europeans had to do. The wounds and disabilities to his arm and hip and ass he suffered in Italy meant nothing to him - he was still alive and able to work.

Nobody out of the "Greatest Generation" could ever forsee the day when Americans were led around like sheep and be expected to work in order to provide handouts to almost half the population. And lay down to government mandates. And be told what not to eat or where to smoke. Pop would be 96 now, mad as hell, and ready to be a machine gunner again.

Get rid of the muslims and foreign suckers here. Get mean on the world and show them we mean buisness. Show some balls.

I couldn't agree with your father more. American citizens, allegedly citizens of the greatest society ever known to mankind, should not be forced to such an invasion of privacy and be compelled without just cause to illegal personal searches. We are either free or we are not free. there is no middle ground.

Of course there is a middle ground, it just differs from person to person.

Let's stpe back and ask this question. Who is most likely to perform a terrorist act? A united states citizen or someone who is not a united states citizen?

I would like to submit that violating my constitutional right to be free of unreasonale searches without probable cause or due process does nothing to make air travel safer. What would make it safer is if every bag and all cargo was similarly screened, which of course everyone knows is not the case.

for further thought: Since 2000, the odds of you dying as a result of a terrorist act aboard a commercial American airliner is 1 in 25 million. The odds of getting struck by lightning: 1 in 500,000. So is this invasion of privacy a proportional response to the actual risk? needless to say your odds of being killed in a car accident are significantly better, but that doesn't keep people from driving.

As an American citizen travelling within the united states with a valid passport, I pose no risk to any flyer. Nor do I believe any similar person poses a rsik to me. What does pose a risk is a non-citizen of arab descent. Those people do not get or should not get the same presumption of innocence that I am entitled to as a citizen.

Feeling safe and being safe are not the same thing

Actually Timothy McVeigh and Nichols were the tipping point for American Terrorism. Yes in the past most of the Presidential assasinations were american sponsored terrorism but it really came home to roost when ole Timmy and his gang blew 300 people away in the early 90's..The shoe bomber and the nut who lived in the woods along with many who have plotted recent mayhem share the unique status of being American...Times Square bomber ? You guessed it American. SO the question really needs to be "are you willing to suffer the slight intrusion an radiation to clear customs in order to restore one's faith you will not have to wrestle with a guy lighting his shoe on fire?" Most of the new terrorists are also frequent flyers to a variety of euro hubs on their way to base camps to learn how to circumvent the security and build mayhem out of untraceable fluids and plastics..The average family flies all of once a year..Deal with it is my motto.