TSA: A Bureaucracy Gone Wild

I pity the traveling public in the US. I posted yesterday a story where troops returning from Afghanistan were insulted and harrassed by TSA minions concerned about "security". This from a uniformed guy who never left the USA makind demands on troops who have just returned from a tour of duty risking their lives in combat to provide security for these TSA staff and everybody else in the US, just so these TSA "dudes" can to harrass the soldier about "the need for security".

Today I'm posting a letter from a group of experts who have tried to alert Washington to the raised risks of TSA's so-call "less than negligible risks" from radiation in the new scanners:

The physics of these X-rays is very telling: the X-rays are Compton-Scattering off outer molecule bonding electrons and thus inelastic (likely breaking bonds).

Unlike other scanners, these new devices operate at relatively low beam energies (28keV). The majority of their energy is delivered to the skin and the underlying tissue. Thus, while the dose would be safe if it were distributed throughout the volume of the entire body, the dose to the skin may be dangerously high.

The X-ray dose from these devices has often been compared in the media to the cosmic ray exposure inherent to airplane travel or that of a chest X-ray. However, this comparison is very misleading: both the air travel cosmic ray exposure and chest Xrays have much higher X-ray energies and the health consequences are appropriately understood in terms of the whole body volume dose. In contrast, these new airport scanners are largely depositing their energy into the skin and immediately adjacent tissue, and since this is such a small fraction of body weight/vol, possibly by one to two
orders of magnitude, the real dose to the skin is now high.

The other choice offered travelers is to undergo a sexual assault by an aggressive "pat down". This includes:

• Doing an aggressive "pat down" of a 6 year old that left him traumatized. (Question: How many terrorists are 6 years old?)


• Forcing a flight attendant who is breast cancer survivor to "show" a breast prosthesis aftera scanning and a "pat down". (Question: just how many terrorist work as airline attendants?)

To my mind, this kind of knee-jerk "administration" of security is symptomatic of the Obama presidency. Superficially it is high-minded and correct, but in the details it runs off the rails, fails to achieve its goals, ignores the realities on the ground, and is completely inadequate. (For example: here is Obama undercutting his recently passed health care reform!)

Previously I've surmised that Obama is a Jimmy Carter-like president, i.e. a "nice guy" but ineffectual. But I am now thinking that is an insult to Jimmy Carter. I'm moving Obama down into the lower 25% of all American presidents. He is simply inadequate to the historic need and he has shown himself unable to grasp what is required, to construct appropriate policy, and to vigorously push his agenda. He is adrift and ineffectual.

In 2008 I thought Obama was a ground-breaking and breath-taking candidate for president. I thought he had the background (community organizing, Senate seat, and eloquent speech making) and the competence (outstanding Harvard law student, successful Constitutional Law professor, lots of "smarts"). But I am completely disillusioned: I now believe the American people would be better served if Obama stepped down and allowed Joe Biden to finish out his term.