Leave it to the Obama White House to be completely clueless about the law regarding invasive searches (since they don’t have a clue on just about everything they face). Andy McCarthy sums it up best:

But what makes the search appropriate is the record of the people involved, not the abstract possibility of violence. A savage act is always possible. If that is all it took to justify gross infringements of liberty, such infringements would always and everywhere be justified. An intrusive search is reasonable, or not, based on what the people involved have done to prompt it, not simply because life is fraught with peril.

That is because probable cause is not the same as possible harm. In fact ‘possible‘ is not the same as ‘probable‘ – something the left forgets. When Bush made his famous changes to FISA to let the NSA pass on terrorist leads to the FBI, there had to be a probable cause trigger. In those cases, anyone in the US in contact with a known and monitored terrorist (detected by the NSA as they monitored the terrorists) would trigger an FBI investigation to see if there was probable cause for extending the surveillance to the person in the US. In no case was anyone targeted because they simply might be a terrorist. People had to be in contact with known terrorists – a definition the Obama administration foolishly limited with deadly results.

This is how Major Nidal (Ft Hood Massacre) ended up being the subject of TWO counter terrorism investigations, beginning under Bush and continuing as Obama took over the reigns of government. I was able to piece together a time line indicating how AG Holder and Obama likely suspended the investigation and monitoring of Major Nidal in the summer of 2009, as part of their dimwitted policy to dial back the war on terror from the Bush era. See, Nidal had been in contact with the American traitor Anwar al-Awlaki who fights for al Qaeda in Yemen. Under the Bush rules, once Nidal contacted al-Awlaki he triggered the probable cause alarm. His actions gave the national security apparatus the right to investigate and infringe on 4th amendment rights. Obama and Holder saw Nidal and Awlaki as US citizens, and Yemen not part of the war on al Qaeda.

A position they clearly learned was wrong, now that Obama has put an assassination order out on al-Awlaki. Talk about a pendulum swing. First he has protected speech, then he can be killed without a trial or verdict.

This is clearly not what TSA and DHS is doing now. They have stolen our constitutional rights on the basis of a possible attack. All those people getting molested in public are being wrongfully infringed upon, since there is NO probable cause they are a threat. We are all guilty until patted down, felt up and deemed innocent.

Massive violations of the US Constitution is a high crime – and needs to be seen as such. We cannot let panicked bureaucrats steel our constitution to cover up their mistakes. There needs to a high price for this kind of law breaking. We are off the slippery slope and now falling into the hole of dictatorship.

MAJOR UPDATE: Anyone who thinks the Constitution is something that can be polled and waved by some sort of voice vote really has to go back to US Government class in High School.

Despite a reported uproar about full-body screening procedures now in broader use at U.S. airports and calls for a boycott, Gallup finds that relatively few frequent U.S. air travelers are angry about the new procedures or inclined to cut back on flying as a result.

Public opinion is irrelevant in this matter. The public can be of the view that it is not right to home school, teach abstinence or not allow a 9 year old watch Jurassic Park. My rights and my decisions are not up for national polling. This is the straw that is breaking the backs of We The People. I don’t care if 95% of the people wave their rights – I do not! And you can only confiscate my constitutional rights from my cold dead hands – at which point America will have died anyway.