You agree with Krellin's posts about murdering and racially profiling people?

No, I agree with krellin's post that says it's impossible to ignore him o_O

Btw, it's Marcy Wheeler. This basic error makes me skeptical of your claims of knowing what you're talking about.

Unfortunately not.

But is your concern going to focus on me getting her first name right or the fact that she repeatedly says TSA employees are doing what amounts to "rape" of passengers. Or the fact that the Koch brothers astro-turfed a demonization campaign of the TSA which culminated in an armed attack on TSA agents and destroyed their unionization efforts?

http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2010/11/22/white-house-only-170000-people-have-had-genitalia-groped-by-complete-stranger-in-last-week/

http://www.emptywheel.net/2010/11/23/did-just-170000-passengers-get-groped-by-strangers-last-week-or-a-million/

https://www.evernote.com/shard/s1/sh/87ea00e1-e333-40 9-af5c-c8047519adc9/9950548e951f765c6ef7614e2eb8af7b

http://www.emptywheel.net/2013/11/05/apparently-criticizing-tsas-boss-is-anti-worker/

The title kinda sums it up. The villian of the piece is the guy who implements the policy, and it's pretty clear that criticising policy is not the same as attacking individual workers.

No, sorry, that won't wash. She used over-the-top rhetoric and called it rape, with the clear implication that the workers are therefore 'rapists' committing millions of rapes, and now wants to backtrack and claim that she somehow only focused on the big boss. You're calling this behavior rape and in any other context, saying the "boss made me do it" doesn't absolve anybody of anything.

Her reply is a total cop-out and doesn't address her terrible choice of words to describe the pat-downs.

Actually, you'll find that passing the buck upwards absolves a lot of people of quite a lot almost all the time.

Well, considering the fact that this peevish, dehumanizing rhetoric on the part of Wheeler, Greenwald, and other supposed left-liberals (who work for Cato and support Ron Paul) was part of an orchestrated campaign that began in 2010 when the TSA was given legal permission to attempt to unionize, it ended up hurting the workers much more than the big boss.

But I suppose that type of massive collateral damage as a result of wanting to beat one's chest about the big bad state was worth it to rich bloggers like Wheeler and Greenwald.

Don't expect me to view their criticisms as anything but reactionary and irresponsible, though. I'm not signing on to any campaign to call federal employees trying to unionize rapists, or people who take orders to rape others (which is supposedly better). Sorry if that makes me a bad leftist in the eyes of Ron Paul supporting Cato fundraisers.

Greenwald on Paul:

even though I don’t support him for President, Ron Paul is the only major candidate from either party advocating crucial views on vital issues that need to be heard, and so his candidacy generates important benefits.

So stop lying.

WTF do you call saying RP is the best of all available candidates, including the sitting President, if not support? Who cares if he voted for him or formally endorsed him, he has said that RP is the candidate with the best positions on issues he cares about.

From the same piece:

"But if you don’t believe those things, then you’re going to be searching for ways to change mainstream political discourse and to disrupt the bipartisan consensus which shields these policies from all debate, let alone challenge. As imperfect a vehicle as it is, Ron Paul’s candidacy — his success within a Republican primary even as he unapologetically challenges these orthodoxies — is one of the few games in town for achieving any of that (now that Johnson has left the GOP and will [likely] run as the Libertarian Party candidate, perhaps he can accomplish that as well). As Conor Friedersdorf put it in his excellent, and appropriately agonizing, analysis of the Paul candidacy and his newsletters:

What I want Paul detractors to confront is that he alone, among viable candidates, favors reforming certain atrocious policies, including policies that explicitly target ethnic and religious minorities. And that, appalling as it is, every candidate in 2012 who has polled above 10 percent is complicit in some heinous policy or action or association. Paul’s association with racist newsletters is a serious moral failing, and even so, it doesn’t save us from making a fraught moral judgment about whether or not to support his candidacy, even if we’re judging by the single metric of protecting racial or ethnic minority groups, because when it comes to America’s most racist or racially fraught policies, Paul is arguably on the right side of all of them. "

hehe, a guy named mendax told someone to stop lying

(i'm on your side mendax to be clear but the irony is too much if that's the Latin word i think it is)

And then if we look at his next article, what do we find:

Much of the reaction to the article I wrote last Saturday regarding progressives, the Obama presidency and Ron Paul (as well as reaction to this essay by Matt Stoller and even this tweet from Katrina vanden Heuvel) relied on exactly the sort of blatant distortions that I began that article by anticipating and renouncing: that I was endorsing Paul as the best presidential candidate, that I was urging progressives to sacrifice reproductive rights in order to vote for him over Obama, that I “pretend[ed] that the differences between Obama and Paul on economics [and other domestic issues] are marginal”; that Paul’s bad positions negate the argument I made; that Ron Paul is my “hero,” etc. etc. So self-evidently petty and slimy are those kinds of distortions that (other than to note their falsehoods for the record) they warrant no discussion; indeed, as I wrote: “So potent is this poison that no inoculation against it exists” and would thus “proceed to make a couple of important points about both candidacies even knowing in advance how wildly they will be distorted.”

Congrats, Putin, for proving his point so wonderfully.

@President Eden - I appreciate the irony, the name seemed far too appropriate for diplomacy to resist.

This organization is a farce.

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/365823/tsa-seizes-sock-monkeys-toy-gun-andrew-johnson

That's not even close to the most absurd things they do, PE.

Because the private security that preceded the TSA was wonderful.

Libertarianism is a farce.

yeah it actually p. much is

TSA is just this generation's WPA ... it is a full employment program, not a security program.

"Because the private security that preceded the TSA was wonderful."

Yes, it was. You could be ready to board your plane within 15 minutes of arriving at the airport. You didn't have to get violated by Pornoscan machines, didn't have to take your shoes off, didn't have to prove your laptop wasn't a bomb, little old ladies in walkers weren't getting stripsearched, you didn't have to let some stranger put their hands down your pants, and you were always treated with courtesy and respect (because, unlike the TSA, you could be FIRED if you didn't). What I wouldn't give to get those days back again.

I have a question for my fellow libertarians/constitutionalists out there. I'm trying to formulate my own, Constitution-based opinion on the matter:

Does the federal government "own" the airspace in which airplanes fly? As such, is it the federal government's responsibility to regulate and defend this airspace? Does each state have its own airspace? Because if the federal government owns the airspace, I believe the federal government has the responsibility to regulate and defend the aforementioned airspace, but it is also incumbent on the government to respect the rights of those who travel through that airspace.

That's a terrible argument for disbanding the TSA.

It's not an argument. I'm asking whether or not we're considering the airways to be "owned" by the federal government, in which case I would not favor disbanding the TSA.

Even if they do, the TSA is a massive waste of money. Even simply reducing its capacity would be helpful.

The whole screening process needs to be streamlined. If you and your baggage can make it through a metal detector, you should be able to get on a plane.

My guess is that that's far too light.

No, airspace is not owned by the federal government any more than by the states.

But of course it's the federal government's duty to defend it -- just as it's its duty to defend state property or private property.

http://aviation.uslegal.com/ownership-of-airspace-over-property/

Okay, but does the federal government have the authority to regulate airspace? If so, I support the TSA on constitutional grounds, but maintain that the search process needs serious reform.