This country’s subsidies for blending ethanol with gasoline is one of our government’s most wasteful and corrupting uses of taxpayer money. The subsidies distort the market, they don’t create jobs, they fail to improve the environment, and most of the funds flow to a few wealthy individuals and well-connected companies. I’m glad to see there [...]

Nancy Pelosi dug her heels in last night and told her caucus that the President wants no extension of the Bush tax cuts beyond the $250,000 threshold. She’s also signaled that she’ll put it up for a vote on the suspension calendar, which means Republicans can’t make amendments or the motion to recommit. But it also means she’ll have to get 290 votes in order to pass it, and there’s no way she can bring enough Republicans on board to do that.

So it’s a purely symbolic vote that will fail. But she’s asking members to take it anyway, because she says that’s what the President wants.

The driving force behind Al-Qaeda and related groups acts of terrorism is not a profound hatred of air travel. They don’t deeply despise the Boeing 747. They aren’t driven by the belief that the ability to travel from New York to San Francisco in under 7 hours is affront to God. They hate America and [...]

It’s obscene that The Nation published this hit piece. There’s nothing “liberal” about using your platform to launder unsubstantiated attacks by government officials against individual citizens who criticize them. They owe everyone involved an apology, and unless they can provide proof for the claims they make, they should print a retraction.

“The dumbest part: they did two pat-down demonstrations – male on male, and female on female,” the House staffer said. And they used a young female TSA volunteer “and in front of a room of 200 people, they touched her breasts and her buttocks. People were averting their eyes. The TSA was trying to demonstrate ‘this is not so bad,’ but it made people so uncomfortable to watch, that people were averting their eyes.”

“They shot themselves in the foot,” the staffer continued.

So let me get this straight. John Pistole doesn’t want to detail what the patdown procedures are for fear the terrorists will exploit them, as said when he testified before the Science and Transportation Committee (video right). Then he didn’t tell the public that they were implementing the procedures because he didn’t want the terrorists to know.

And now in order to discourage “opt-out” day, they give advanced notice that a handful of people can easily bring every major airport in the country to a grinding halt with very little effort.

Genius.

Well, you’ll forgive some of us for being suspicious that this has more to do with CYA over headlines about the TSA exploding a cancer patient’s urine bag and forcing a breast cancer patient to pull out her prosthetic breast.

In short, TSA rushed these things into operation without any evidence that they actually work, or what the impact would be of their new heightened “security” measures. Now, according to the 2011 Homeland Security appropriations request, TSA Chief John Pistole wants money for $500 more porno scanners.

The idea of an Opt-Out day has been picking up steam, and many airline passengers will be refusing to submit to the TSA’s whole body imaging scanners on Wednesday, November 24. But in the wake of conflicting messages coming out of the TSA, travelers are going to be confused about what to expect at TSA security checkpoints. So FDL has put together a handy flier about the scanners and the “enhanced” patdown procedures, which explains your risks and rights in the airport:

Download: Know Your Passenger Rights (PDF)

I don’t mean to be vulgar, but as the TSA ratchets up the security theater to new and literally obscene heights, I can’t help thinking about the butt. I’m specifically referring to the ability to smuggle weapons past these security measures using the anal cavity and/or the GI tract. Let’s assume that the new porno [...]