Shrieks for Full-Body Scanners Grow

Power is unwielding and intoxicatingly opportunist so that upon each hint of possible crisis becomes a welcome chance to enact radical and sweeping change. It was Rahm Emanuel, presidential Chief of Staff who put it best when he told the Wall Street Journal, "Never let a good crisis go to waste." "And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things you that you didn't think you could do before."

After the failed Christmas Day plane bombing, another fearful atmosphere of crisis now prevails. While Americans remain aware of the attack, the general non-chalance toward the so-called failed terrorist attack contrasts starkly with the behooved huffing voices on the District of Columbia's congressional floor.

News reports over the weekend indicate increased congressional calls to intervene in Department of Homeland Security policies setting Transportation Security Administration procedures of screening passengers boarding aircraft in the United States. In particular, loud voices call for legislation enacting mandatory full-body scanning of all passengers.

To those unaware, full body imaging entails passengers being X-rayed, similar to what occurs to carry-on luggage. These high-ray machines produce lifelike bodily images of subjects, literally seeing entirely through all clothing, revealing a nude image.

Yet, the TSA insists their scanning limits what remote scanners view as facial features and genitalia are blurred. The TSA also maintains viewers monitoring the scans are placed in a remote location unable to see or be seen by the photographed subject.

Legislation mandating high X-ray scan imaging whose product borders on pornographic and involves certain moral and ethical violations, if not legal crimes, should never be forced on American people simply attempting to travel. If enacted, disastrous results will follow and an even greater curtailment of liberty will ensue. Domestic and international travel will become grounded and the world will revert to an isolationism in travel far grander than ever existed during Cold War times. Full body image scanning must be stopped!

Congress' hawkish calls to punitively harass, humiliate and degrade the blameless traveling public are open warfare upon the American People. These calls remain incongruous with public opinion and imply regulations which are legally questionable and ethically bereft. If the Union is to survive intact and in spirit, liberty must be preserved. For what little remains, the Union may, as some suggest, be beyond the pale.