Not much change to our list of full time encampments this week. We go from 67 to 66 as Occupy Bellingham moves to the “threatened with eviction” list, but since the rash of raids on the 23rd, there hasn’t been much action. (Homeland Security must be giving staff the week off for the holidays.)

Don’t touch my what now? In the week since the biggest travel day of the year, the public attention paid to the TSA’s porno scanners and aggressive groping has plummeted.

The basic story line appears to be that since airports functioned without hiccups from porno scanner opt-outs during the Thanksgiving travel season, the media “overblew” a “false alarm” story. Yet we’re no longer talking about porno scanners and groping because the Thanksgiving holiday passed without incident; no major delays, and even more importantly, no new “don’t touch my junk” videos or similar incidents.

But it was almost too quiet over Thanksgiving…

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 [...]

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 [...]

Sign the Petition: Investigate the TSA, Not John Tyner Help stop TSA’s porno scanners, aggressive groping and abuse of power. Beyond the invasion of privacy problems caused by these x-ray-based airport security “porno scanners,” there are real health concerns. According to Dr. Michael Love, these scanners are going to give some people cancer. From Alternet.org: [...]

A transpartisan coalition on state legislators in New Jersey held a press conference yesterday to announce their intention to seek an end to the TSA’s porno scanner and grope procedures.

Sign the Petition: Investigate the TSA, Not John Tyner Help stop TSA’s porno scanners, aggressive groping and abuse of power. The TSA is opening an investigation targeting John Tyner, the man who earned himself an aggressive “pat down” at the airport when he refused to go through the TSA’s new AIT “porno scanners.” But it’s [...]

You’ve probably heard of the “Don’t Touch My Junk” guy who chose to miss his flight rather than have TSA touch his genitals in its brand new “aggressive pat-downs” strategy. As if the experience wasn’t humiliating enough – and expensive, for missing his flight – the TSA has decided to make an example of John “Don’t Touch My Junk” Tyner. The TSA announced yesterday it would investigate, and may prosecute, Tyner for declining the porno scanners and groping.

Joe Lieberman’s Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs will hold a hearing today at 3:15pm EST to discuss “Closing the Gaps In Air Cargo Security” with TSA Director John Pistole. Lieberman got a head start on the issue, of course. He was on MSNBC yesterday in an interview with Andrea Mitchell, who brought up conversing about full body scanners and security “pat downs.” When asked whether or not he believed that the procedures are invasive, he responded, “I come down on the side of pat downs.”