TSA Enhanced Screenings - Drawing The Line

I'm a believer that preparedness activities take place in mindset as well as in physical activities like food storage, learning skills, etc. So, I frequently spend time thinking about "what if" and run through what responses I might have for various situations - for myself, my children and my family.

This week I had a huge dilemma put before me regarding flying and the new enhanced security procedures being conducted at our airports across the country.

My husband is currently serving on Active Duty with the U.S. Army Reserves. He completed a year of active duty orders in September, and has been extended for what it appears will be an additional year. We are fortunate he is state-side, and we did get the chance to visit him in Kentucky quite often this past year.

This new set of orders has him serving at Ft. Jackson, SC. Quite a bit further from us than Kentucky - not a huge deal, but with 3 young children and no extra drivers - makes you think about the best way to travel.

In trying to make it easier for us to visit him over the Thanksgiving holiday, he purchased tickets for the four of us to fly to see him instead of me having to spend 2 days driving. A trip we were looking forward to, until all of the news started hitting this weekend about the advanced screening techniques being used in the airports.

I hadn't given the security process a lot of thought - I assumed go through the metal detector, don't set if off and you're good to go. I've traveled extensively in my past - at one point having about 2 million frequent flyer miles. I haven't traveled since 9/11 and boy, did I have an eye opening experience learning about the new security theatre and I am appalled that we stand for this in America under the guise of believing it makes us safer.

I learned that I could ask at the ticket counter to have my children "deselected" from enhanced security screenings if they are under the age of 12 (mine are 11 and under). But that apparently is no guarantee they won't be "randomly" selected for additional screening once we are in the security line. Or if they set off the metal detector twice for some reason. And you don't get to choose which security line you end up in. It is purposely set up as a maze so you can't figure out which line leads to which machines.

So red flags are already going off in my head as I'm watching these videos of the new aggressive "pat-down" procedures in place if you "opt out" of the naked body scan or if randomly selected.

There is no way this is a "pat down" people. Try full body cavity search - or not far from it. As a Christian, stay-at-home, homeschooling mother - I've spend a lot of time reinforcing to my girls what kinds of touches are acceptable, especially from strangers. And there is NO WAY the government of this country has the right to "pat down" me or my girls in this fashion.

I do not lose my constitutional rights just because I choose to take a flight. So I have drawn the line in the sand and will not be flying this weekend. I cancelled our flight and let the airline know exactly why I was doing so. Not that they really care - I mean after all, they've already received my non-refundable money.

But we have to take a stand. And we've let too many things slide by already. Every time we give an inch, they take a mile. Until one day we wake up and there is nothing left for them to take.

Here are some links where you can join the fight against these TSA security measures, where you can learn more about what travelers are experiencing and where you can even report your own security screening incidents. The time to act on this is NOW.

LINKS:

Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) - provides information and a place for you to record any scanner incident you would like to report.

We Won't Fly - These are the people pushing for the National Opt-Out day on November 24th, the Wednesday before Thanksgiving.

Fed Up Flyers - Website run by Michael Roberts, the Memphis pilot who refused the body scanner and pat down procedure who has now found himself without a job thanks to his "disobedience".

World Net Daily - Ron Paul introduces legislation to stop these intrusive TSA screenings.

Ann Coulter article - Napolitano: The Ball's In My Court Now

Forbes article about MOBILE scanners in vans that can see through walls, vehicles and clothing - coming to a city near you.

Oh, and guess what? Although Americans are not allowed to be exempted from any of the screening process based on religious grounds, Homeland Security is considering an exemption for Muslim women in burkas. Isn't that special? Read more:

Greely Gazette - Napolitano considering allowing Muslim women to pat themselves down at airports. . .

and

Chandler's Watch - Muslim "women" soon to be exempt from TSA invasive screenings . . . look for Muslim men to follow . . .

Comments to this post will be moderated. Let's keep our discussions civil.


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Following the Foreclosure Issues

Although most of the posts for this blog are written to help you with your preparedness goals or share how one family or other is doing things to give you ideas; it is never-the-less important to stay abreast of issues going on in our nation that could impact you personally, financially, etc. Issues in the news can also impact the urgency of your preparedness activities or could make you change your focus of priorities for purchases, etc.

If you have not been following the events related to the Foreclosure nightmare that is unfolding, or if you have just been going by the blips of information you have received from the main stream media regarding it, then you really do not have a good picture of the urgency of this situation and how significant the impact could be for all of us financially regarding this mess.

I highly recommend the following blog - The Market Ticker - for putting the information out about this for the past 3 YEARS and telling people that this would all blow up one day - and for keeping it real and letting us know what's going on in terms and definitions we can all understand.

So, if you haven't been keeping up, please go do some reading and educate yourself. My thought is while I can't be an expert about everything myself - I can better prepare for myself and my family if I keep up with important events around me by reading about them from the experts that are out there.

Here is a good place to start - and you can search his blog for Foreclosuregate to see all the past entries that will spell it all out for you in understandable detail.

The Market Ticker on Foreclosuregate

Excerpt:

" . . . .These events sure look like black-letter crimes to me. Selling someone crap instead of chocolate, when you tell them it's chocolate, is plain old-fashioned fraud. So is selling someone called a "Mortgage-backed security" without the mortgage backed part. In both cases, if and when this happened, you have people who took someone's money - some $6 trillion of it over the "go-go" years - and sold them crap that was certified as Grade "AAA" chocolate. In each and every case where the sellers lied, they committed a serious crime.

Who got screwed? You. Your pension fund. Your annuity company - an insurance company that might not be able to pay 10 years down the road when you're old, gray and frail.

You are the one who got screwed.

And if these clowns have their way, you'll get screwed again. The Senate knows, and is holding hearings on how to steal your 401ks - your private money - to make up the money the banks stole from Union pension funds. That's right folks - they know, and they're trying to figure out how to make it "more fair" - which is code in Washington DC for taking money from those who didn't get robbed by the banks and giving it to those who did, instead of making the robbers pay back what they stole and unjustly bonused out to their much-vaunted "talent."

Through all this we can't seem to find a prosecutor, perhaps because they're all bought and paid for by those same banks, who threaten "the end of the world" if they would be forced to eat their own cooking - or in this case, their own packaging of the dogcrap they foisted off on you.

What's worse is that we're letting all these people cover it up, even though the game had to go right through the executive suite of these big banks - you simply can't make the argument that which comprises "how one makes their money" wasn't known to the guys at the top.

Everyone talking about this in the mainstream media - with a handful of exceptions like myself on Dylan Ratigan's show, is trying to play this down as a mere technicality.

It's not.

It's a coverup that is now coming unraveled.

Why now?

Because the cash flow - or rather, the lack there - on these defaulted instruments is now becoming a serious problem, and as such you have banks furiously attempting to keep from coming to light the entirety of what happened - and they sure as hell don't want you to look closely at their practices over the last five years!

I said three years ago and have maintained since that in the end the cash flow would kill these games, because while all sorts of lies can be put on a balance sheet, you will never get away with falsifying the deposit ticket.

Guess what? That day has arrived.

Wake up America.

You've been robbed - by the bank."

The Market Ticker


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Bob Corker in West TN on Tuesday, Aug 11th

Senator Bob Corker will speak at two town-hall events in West Tennessee on Tuesday, August 11th:

Covington, TN: 9:00 a.m. at the Chamber Center

Oakland, TN: 5:00 p.m. at the Holy Spirit Lutheran Church's fellowship hall, 14615 State Route 194 - just south of Highway 64.

Shout out if you plan to attend and feel free to come back and let us know how it went!

TN Congressman Sells-Out on Healthcare

Received in my email today from Gun Owners of America - TN Residents need to pay attention and act:

Contact Senators Alexander and Corker
-- Tell them you don't want them to follow Rep. Gordon's cowardly example

Gun Owners of America E-Mail Alert
8001 Forbes Place, Suite 102, Springfield, VA 22151
Phone: 703-321-8585 / FAX: 703-321-8408
http://www.gunowners.org

Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Things were going so well! Perhaps too well.

It looked like the government-run health/anti-gun database created by the stimulus bill would not be extended to the most private medical records of every man, woman, and child in America!

It seemed like the health care bill was on life support.

But who should come riding to the rescue of socialized medicine, rationing, and a federal takeover of health care decisions but ... Tennessee's Bart Gordon.

On Friday, Rep. Gordon voted for a do-nothing "compromise" which allowed the massive health abomination to pass out of Energy and Commerce Committee and go to the House floor after the August recess.

Now that Gordon has sold out, it is imperative that we keep Senators Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker from following Gordon's cowardly example. Tennessee's congressional delegation may be pivotal in determining whether:

* Your most private medical records are placed in a health/anti-gun database operated by the federal government;

* Most Americans lose their current insurance coverage due to HHS-drafted standards that their current insurance fails to comply with [sections 123 and 124 of the House Obama care bill; section 143 of the Kennedy-Dodd bill in the Senate].

Even if the "compromise" that Gordon voted for were a wonderful bill -- which it isn't -- it will just move the process along so that a conference committee controlled by Nancy Pelosi will throw out all of the "compromises" and reinsert whatever she wants.

Once the process reaches that point -- and we realize that the final product is OUR WORST NIGHTMARE -- it will be viewed as having unstoppable momentum and our tools for fighting it will be gone.

The current health care proposals would destroy gun owner privacy safeguards. These bills would put the Obama administration in charge of determining what kind of insurance virtually every American is required to have -- and likewise, what information Americans are required to provide to that database.

Gun owners already know the dangers of a computerized health care database run by anti-gun bureaucrats. Just consider what is occurring right now to our veterans.

The Department of Veterans Affairs has its own nationalized healthcare system with centralized records. Since 1999, over 150,000 veterans, mostly combat veterans, have lost their Second Amendment rights. The reason? A diagnosis by a doctor that the person deals with issues like Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. These veterans committed no crime, were not tried in a court of law, served their country honorably, yet lost their gun rights for life because they told a doctor that they sometimes had nightmares about what they saw in combat.

If our veterans can lose their gun rights based on the diagnoses of a psychiatrist, we're all in trouble if Obama-care comes to the rest of the country. And to our knowledge, none of the compromise talks on Capitol Hill right now would remove gun owners from Obama's crosshairs.

By the way, Gordon's "compromise" contains a phony assurance that the bill's vastly understated trillion-dollar price tag would be reduced by an unspecified and illusory hundred billion.

Some cynics had predicted that so-called moderate Democrats like Gordon were "Pelosi puppets," who would wiggle around a little at the end of their strings, before dutifully dancing to Pelosi's tune. And they were right about Bart Gordon.

The question is: Will Senators Alexander and Corker do the same thing? They could well be the deciding votes in the Senate.

ACTION:

Contact Senators Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker. Ask them to stand firm against gun control ... and against socialized medicine, including the Finance Committee's bill -- and not to sell out to cowardly compromises in order to please the liberal elite.

NOTE: You can "copy and paste" the pre-written letters into the appropriate webforms that are provided to you below.

CONTACT INFORMATION:

(1) Senator Lamar Alexander

Webform: http://alexander.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Contact.Home
Phone: 202-224-4944, or call the Capitol switchboard toll-free at 1-877-762-8762

(2) Senator Bob Corker

Webform: http://corker.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=ContactInformation.ContactMe
Phone: 202-224-3344, or call the Capitol switchboard toll-free at 1-877-762-8762

----- Pre-written letter -----

Dear Senator:

You may be the pivotal vote in determining whether:

* My most private medical records are placed in a health/anti-gun database operated by the federal government;

* Most Americans lose their current insurance coverage due to HHS-drafted standards that their current insurance fails to comply with [sections 123 and 124 of the House Obamacare bill; section 143 of the Kennedy-Dodd bill].

So it is particularly alarming that Tennessee Congressman Bart Gordon voted for a face-saving do-nothing "compromise" which allowed the massive health abomination to pass out of Energy and Commerce Committee and go to the House floor after the August recess.

I urge you to stand firm against government-controlled medicine, and to not follow Gordon's cowardly betrayal of his Tennessee constituents.

Sincerely,

ATF Rejects TN Firearms Freedom Act

Received this alert in my email today from the Tennessee Firearms Association that the ATF is rejecting the Tennessee Firearms Freedom Act:

Tennessee Firearms Association, Inc.
Legislative Action Committee

---

The ATF - as expected - has issued a letter in which it disregards the 10th Amendment restrictions on federal power ( as seems to be the trend since the late 1930) and has notified Tennessee's federal firearms dealers that the Tennessee Firearms Freedom Act is meaningless. Essentially, ATF is saying to the state of Tennessee that the 10th Amendment no longer exists.

We expected such from a tyranny that no longer lives within the bounds of its express authority.....

Here's a link to the full letter the ATF sent to all TN FFLs:

Letter July 16, 2009

Lovely, eh?

Testing the CRC Waters - Time To Respond!

*****See Important Update at End of Post*****

I received this update this morning from Parental Rights.org - a wonderful organization that works to keep parental rights where they should be - with parents; and is working hard to fight against the U.S. ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC).

The administration is now "testing the waters" (as they indicate in this update) to see if they are going to draw much opposition for ratifying this treaty - and we need to work quickly and loudly to make our voices heard that we do not support the US ratifying this treaty.

If you are not familiar with the UN Convention, it is most urgent that you take the time to visit Parental Rights website and get educated about this convention and all it does to TAKE AWAY rights of parents.

The threat is real, it is huge, and judges throughout this nation are already using parts of the CRC to make legal rulings regarding families. You can visit this link THE THREAT to see real examples of rulings that are using CRC to break apart families and undermine parental wishes.

I urge you to keep abreast of developments regarding this treaty; in addition to taking away parental rights it is another example of taking a UN Treaty that once ratified, becomes the overwhelming law of the land here.

Here is the update I received this morning - please read and take action:

Dear Friend of Parental Rights,

Monday in a Harlem middle school, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice told a group of 120 students that administration officials are actively discussing “when and how it might be possible to join” (that is, ratify) the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). As before, she also communicated what a disgrace it is that the U.S. would stand with only Somalia against such a widely-accepted treaty.

This is the first direct public statement by the Obama administration that it will seek ratification of the UN CRC.

In my 30 years of political involvement, I have learned to recognize this as what is called a “trial balloon.” Like in World War I trench warfare, our opponents have “sent up a balloon” to see if it will draw fire. If things remain quiet, they will proceed with their plans to push for ratification of the CRC in the U.S. Senate.

To discourage them from doing so, we need to make sure that our voices are heard with unmistakable clarity. We must let the Obama administration know that we oppose this anti-family, anti-American treaty.

Here’s what we need you all to do:

1. Call the White House comments line at 202-456-1111. Tell them you heard the administration wants to ratify the CRC, and you strongly oppose this giving away of U.S. sovereignty to the UN. Also keep in mind that this treaty gives the government jurisdiction to override any decision made by any parent if the government thinks that a better decision can be made—even if there is no proof of any harm.

2. Call Ambassador Susan Rice’s office at the United Nations. Tell her that you want her to represent the United States to the world rather than trying to get the United States to go along with international treaties.

UPDATE: It turns out Susan Rice's name is not in the automated directory. However, there are three options to fix this. Please dial ONE of them, and deliver the message that you oppose the CRC, and that she should represent Americans to the United Nations rather than push a UN agenda on our country.

1. Dial the main line at 1-212-415-4000, and dial 6 to leave your message; OR

2. Dial the Public Diplomacy Office at 1-212-415-4050 and leave a message; OR

3. Dial her office directly at 1-212-415-4404. Again, you will need to leave a message.

This is not a message they want to hear, so do not expect a cordial reception. The important thing is to get the message through.

3. Contact your Senators and urge them to oppose ratification of this treaty. (Find your Senators’ contact information by typing your zip code into the box here.) Ask them also to defeat it once and for all by cosponsoring SJRes 16 – the Parental Rights Amendment.

It is very important that we speak up right now. Please call before you close this email!

Sincerely,
Michael Farris

Find this letter online.

UPDATE from ParentalRights.org: Congratulations!

The office of U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice has been inundated with calls! The first phone line we sent out has been completely shut down, and the voice mail system for all of their lines has been crashed.

This means you can't likely get through, so what do you do?

You no longer need to call the U.S. office at the U.N. Instead, please contact the White House comment line at 202-456-1111. It may be busy - we have kept it busy all day -- but keep trying. It is only open from 9 to 5 (EDT), so time is limited. However, you can also send them a message online at http://www.whitehouse.gov/CONTACT/.

Also, contact your Senators. Their offices also close at 5 (EDT), so try to get to them quickly - or call tomorrow!

International Laws are U.S. Laws?

I received this email update today from ParentalRights.org, where I have an email subscription for their updates. They are an organization that belives children are protected when parents are empowered to rear and educate their children without interference from government.

They have an update from 16 June 2009 entitled: International Law versus Army Recruiters - here's the quote from their site:

A U.S. District Court in Oakland last week declined to hear oral arguments in a case pitting international law against U.S. military policy. Judge Saundra Armstrong announced Tuesday that she would decide the case based on briefs and other documents presented to the court for that purpose. “No matter the outcome,” Arcata counsel Brad Yamauchi says, “we’re going to appeal to the 9th Circuit and possibly the Supreme Court.”

At the heart of the case are local ordinances from Eureka and Arcata, two northern California cities, which would prohibit U.S. armed services recruiters from initiating contact with youths under 18, anywhere within city limits. The U.S. Department of Justice first filed suit against the towns, claiming that these Youth Protection Acts fail under Article VI of the Constitution, which makes federal law supreme over contradictory state or local legislation.

In response, the cities filed countersuits claiming that current military policy violates the Convention on the Rights of the Child’s Optional Protocol on Children in Armed Conflict, which the U.S. ratified in 2002. (This is a separate but related treaty to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC); the U.S. has not ratified the main CRC.) “When the government enters into an international treaty or protocol, that becomes the law of the United States,” says Yamauchi, also citing Article VI. The cities claim that the U.S. military is in violation of the Protocol’s prohibition on the recruiting of children for military service. Current federal law allows representatives of the armed services to educate high school and college students on military career options, alongside other educational and vocational recruiters at job fairs and the like. To actually enlist, however, one must be 18, or close to 18 with parental consent. This countersuit constitutes the first time since the 2002 ratification of the protocol that the federal government’s compliance with the treaty has been legally questioned.

Judge Armstrong’s decision to forgo oral arguments is widely considered favorable to the federal government’s case. “[I]f anything, it is a negative sign for us because we obviously have the steeper hill to climb,” admits Eureka City Attorney Sheryl Schaffner. However, Armstrong’s decision, which could come at any time, is not likely to be the end, nor is it safe to guess how the 9th Circuit might rule if the case is appealed.

That this case exists at all is evidence of the threat that international law presents to our American way of life. Should the full CRC be ratified, not only federal law, but even state, local and individual family decisions will come under the authority of the United Nations when children are involved. The Parental Rights Amendment is the only guaranteed method to permanently stop international law from interfering with family and state laws.

This case is very important for us to watch, because at the heart is the argument that part of an international treaty that was ratified by the U.S. in 2002 is now law of the land here. And all the more reason why we parents need to fight with all we have against allowing the U.S. to ratify the UN Convention on the Rights Of The Child. You can read more about the UN Convention on the Rights of The Child at the link and find out for yourself exactly how dangerous this treaty is to dissolving your parental rights.

IF THIS isn't enough, Britain is using the same UN Convention on the Rights of the Child to argue for an END to homeschooling for British parents - something that could very well happen in the U.S. if the Convention is ratified here. Those of you who homeschool are well aware of the opposition we have out there and this Convention, if ratified, would indeed be used against us by the NEA and others to take away our homeschooling rights. You can read more about what's happening in Britain here: UN Treaty Jeopardizes Homeschool Freedom in Britain.

Stay alert, stay informed.

ABC Turns Programming Over to Government

This is truly incredible. Found this morning on my daily read of The Market Ticker, by Karl Denninger. He has authenticated this letter. Here's the info:

Original Post:

Tuesday, June 16. 2009

Posted by Karl Denninger in Politics at 09:28
(Page 1 of 351, totaling 1053 entries)

Goebbels Media (Update: Authenticated)

There's the link to Mr. Dennigner's complete blog post and the RNC letter. I'm only showing the content of the letter here, for brevity:

ABC TURNS PROGRAMMING OVER TO OBAMA; NEWS TO BE ANCHORED FROM INSIDE WHITE HOUSE
Tue Jun 16 2009 08:45:10 ET

On the night of June 24, the media and government become one, when ABC turns its programming over to President Obama and White House officials to push government run health care -- a move that has ignited an ethical firestorm!

Highlights on the agenda:

ABCNEWS anchor Charlie Gibson will deliver WORLD NEWS from the Blue Room of the White House.

The network plans a primetime special -- 'Prescription for America' -- originating from the East Room, exclude opposing voices on the debate.

MORE

Late Monday night, Republican National Committee Chief of Staff Ken McKay fired off a complaint to the head of ABCNEWS:

Dear Mr. Westin:

As the national debate on health care reform intensifies, I am deeply concerned and disappointed with ABC's astonishing decision to exclude opposing voices on this critical issue on June 24, 2009. Next Wednesday, ABC News will air a primetime health care reform “town hall” at the White House with President Barack Obama. In addition, according to an ABC News report, GOOD MORNING AMERICA, WORLD NEWS, NIGHTLINE and ABC’s web news “will all feature special programming on the president’s health care agenda.” This does not include the promotion, over the next 9 days, the president’s health care agenda will receive on ABC News programming.

Today, the Republican National Committee requested an opportunity to add our Party's views to those of the President's to ensure that all sides of the health care reform debate are presented. Our request was rejected. I believe that the President should have the ability to speak directly to the America people. However, I find it outrageous that ABC would prohibit our Party's opposing thoughts and ideas from this national debate, which affects millions of ABC viewers.

In the absence of opposition, I am concerned this event will become a glorified infomercial to promote the Democrat agenda. If that is the case, this primetime infomercial should be paid for out of the DNC coffers. President Obama does not hold a monopoly on health care reform ideas or on free airtime. The President has stated time and time again that he wants a bipartisan debate. Therefore, the Republican Party should be included in this primetime event, or the DNC should pay for your airtime.

Respectfully,
Ken McKay
Republican National Committee
Chief of Staff

Please take a few minutes to go to Mr. Denninger's blog and read the whole post - and as I've mentioned numerous times before, if you don't make his blog one of your daily reads, you really should!