I view healthcare as a personal responsibilty, not any kind of liberty. It's hard to exercise any liberties when you are sick or injured. For that matter, it's hard to meet any other personal responsibility than personal health when you are sick or injured, depending on the extent of injury (which is itself a lack of health), which is why healthcare isn't really a cut and dry issue of personal versus communal liability, IMO.

Not even if you live in Nevada, I'd imagine - since the State isn't in the business of selling health insurance in the first place. But if my insurance provider has offices only in Nevada and I live in California does that count as interstate commerce?

I guess then comes down to the definition of public, not secret. http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/2010/12/crs_block.html

I second scubamage. Well said, bkmoore.

I think the issue is not that TSA isn't a private entity, it's that the search is mandated as legal so anything found during the search is admissible in court as evidence of contraband (either drugs or weapons, both are proof of illegal activity) whereas an illegal search, such as one without probable cause, is not.

Fucking right on. I'd vote for that kind of action. It's a change (of attitude) I can believe in.

How will one be recognized as an official journalist? I've heard of a license to kill being properly vetted, but a license just to shoot? Ya, I work for a newspaper...

If someone is not randomly selected for screening, they can take weapons into the airport. The US has a single point of screening, which is burdened with the "we don't profile" excuse of randomness that makes it less effective than the Israeli method of screening with behavior profiling, regardless of ethnicity or citizenship. The US is larger and has a more diverse ethnicity and citizenry of travelers, true; but Israel has a larger problem with attempts to bypass their security than the US, and their security procedures for flight safety are more effective *and* less intrusive.

I don't understand how the specifics of the Israeli security solution that has evolved to what it is today is considered to be something of no value to a US system, regardless of its roots. It also doesn't rationalize the ineffectiveness of the US system represented by these scanners and enhanced pat-downs, so the scale of a nation's size is support of taking those extra steps rather than finding fault with them just because they're not made in America.

Having everybody go thru more advanced scanners will only be possible if said scanners do not pose a greater health risk of slowly killing everyone who boards a plane (or enters an airport) than the chances of quickly killing a few who fly. I'm sure that if such a scanner existed both the Israeli and US airports would want to use them. My point is that in the US it seems that only those would be used (along with other mostly limited procedures you mention) whereas in Israel and other countries they'd be supplemental to other more efficient *and* effective measures.

This whole "we fear more because we are greater" mentality is what allows ineffective and invasive actions by the US government to evolve into degradation of civil and human rights that we are witnessing today. Yes, the scanners are in the news more than the effective screening methods; because they are humiliating and degrading to our citizenry and to people in general while at the same time being arguably ineffective, hazardous, and suspect of a hidden agenda for profit and/or limits to freedom.

I questioned this assertion by Sowelu:

"The reason the US doesn't have a system like Israel's is that most flights in the US are domestic."

So you are saying that US domestic flights are more international than Israeli flights (as far as ethnicity of passengers), and that the only reason their system works in Israel is because they only screen Arab-looking individuals rather than randomly picking people out of line, and those two reasons are why a system won't work in the US?

I'm speaking of the multi-layered security approach of behavior profiling as far as what I mean by "like Israeli" system, not the racial profiling you describe. We have a single point of failure called the scanner. Even with the enhanced pat-downs and nudie scanners it is possible to get a weapon or a bomb past that checkpoint because the scans and pat-downs are not applied evenly to all passengers. To do so would be even more inefficient than either the existing US system or the Israeli system. I won't address the racial tensions in Israel because I've never been in an Israeli airport. In US airports, however, I can say that there is still a measure of hostility towards people of color, not just Arab-looking people, and as you've described the white US citizens and non-citizens are not scrutinized as much (tho sometimes they are randomly screened).

>The reason the US doesn't have a system like Israel's is that most flights in the US are domestic.

Seriously? What then is preventing the US from implementing Israel's international flght security system as a US domestic flight security system. From an geographic standpoint, flying from California to Oregon is as much an international flight as any flight leaving Israel; so what is the difference?

Actually, they are saying "submit to a search or you will be fined for attempting to get on a plane and refusing to be searched."

BIG difference.

I'll second that.

Priceless. True genius.

-applause-

I was thinking of replying to a previous post about Beatles being outdated, but I'd rather not. Especially now that I see your post, which articulates the concept more clearly than merely saying, "...these are words that go together well," still applies today as much as it did when they were written and put to music.

When I clicked to read the slashdot comments for this article, the quote at the bottom of the page reads:

"I consider a new device or technology to have been culturally accepted when it has been used to commit a murder. -- M. Gallaher"

Thar it is!

I use Adobe on Mac instead of Windows not because I hate/love either operating system, but because I have 20 years worth of Applescript built for a unique workflow that involves much more than Adobe/Apple/Microsoft products.