My Canadian counterpart explains why the current TSA kerfluffle is nothing but rank hypocrisy on the part of the GOP.
Of course, with everyone flipping the fuck out, it tends to be forgotten that half of America is being more than a little hypocritical. It wasn’t too long ago, after all, that we heard the constant refrain of “We’re at war! The government needs to do everything in it’s power to keep us safe!” As a matter of fact, it was only last Christmas that the federal government was being accused of not doing enough to secure airliners.
I encourage everyone to read through some Republican-leaning blogs this week. Note the outrage over the sexy scanners and feel-coppers at an American airport near you. Then go back through the archives to last Christmas, through the middle of January. And, just for giggles, skip back to late 2005, when the National Security Agency’s “wireless wiretapping” program was exposed. You’ll likely notice a … change of tone over the last five days or so.
One thing that I’ve noticed this week is that Republicans are using the phrase “privacy rights” quite a bit these days. That’s special insofar as these people have spent most of the last forty years denying that such a right even exists, except in the special circumstance of Rush Limbaugh pretending to be Keith Richards.