12 New Year's Resolutions for the TSA

I fly a lot and so, unfortunately, have had many "interactions" with the TSA (and I have yet to go through the full-body-scanners). This article by Christopher Elliot, entitled 12 New Year's Resolutions For The TSA In 2012 speaks my mind. Rebecca Hains, the college professor who was in the news recently when the TSA confiscated her cupcake, put it well when she said, "It's not really about the cupcake; I can get another cupcake. It's about an encroachment on civil liberties. We're just building up a resistance and tolerance to all these things they're doing in the name of security, when it's really theater. It is not keeping us safe." It is the cumulative effect of giving up our civil liberties bit by bit to government bureaucracy that concerns me. Historically, such incremental creeping authoritarianism has led to larger-scale oppression. It is the old frog in the kettle analogy.