The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has threatened Americans seeking to travel by air.  They have proclaimed that if you refuse to allow them to view you through the nekkid body scanners or submit to an extremely intimate pat down by someone you don’t even know, you will not be allowed to fly.  However, you will not be allowed to leave the airport, either.

You, an average American citizen, will have to be questioned by the TSA and possibly by local law enforcement. And for not allowing the TSA to treat you like a Terrorist, you could face a fine up to $11,000 and possible arrest.

Sari Koshetz, regional TSA spokesperson, based in Miami said:

Once a person submits to the screening process, they can not just decide to leave that process.

She also stated that such passengers would be questioned “until it is determined that they don’t pose a threat” to the public.

Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Teri Barbera said PBSO deputies stationed at the airport would become involved if the TSA asks them to.

Barbera said that if a person is estimated to be a possible threat, deputies have the legal right to detain and search that individual:

The deputies will do it at the airport just as they would do it anywhere else.

According to her, once the TSA and deputies have determined that you’re just an average American, you will be allowed to leave.

The ACLU has gotten involved. (Of course.)  They want everyone to petition the Department of Homeland Security, and Big Sis, who oversees the TSA, to dump this ill-conceived security program.

The ACLU writes:

All of us have a right to travel without such crude invasions of our privacy. Tell DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano to put in place security measures that respect passengers’ privacy rights. You shouldn’t have to check your rights when you check your luggage.

The ACLU also outlined ways for citizens to respond to TSA demands at checkpoints and also provided a form letter for filing complaints.

But the TSA is stomping up and down and holding its breath until it turns blue.

In a testimony before Congress Wednesday, TSA Administrator John S. Pistole said that the touch feely program would not be stopping anytime soon, because:

We have to ensure that each person getting on every flight is secure.

U.S. Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) asked about groups that objected to all forms of bodily search on religious grounds.  Pistole didn’t care:

While we respect that person’s beliefs, that person’s not going to get on an airplane.

The nekkid body scanners are now being used at more than 60 airports.

As we enter the busiest travel season of the year, hurried travelers will have to slow down and undergo treatment that has, in the past, been reserved for suspected Islamic Terrorists or citizens of some Marxist nation, not citizens of the United States of America.

Tales are surfacing of cancer survivors being humiliated,  young children being patted down, and massive lines already starting at America’s airports.

President Barack Hussein Obama (peace be upon him) was asked about the new TSA procedures in Lisbon, where he is attending a NATO summit.

Scooter says that he sympathizes with the Proletariat…errr….ummm…us little people:

I understand people’s frustrations, and what I’ve said to the TSA is that you have to constantly refine and measure whether what we’re doing is the only way to assure the American people’s safety. And you also have to think through are there other ways of doing it that are less intrusive.

But at this point, TSA in consultation with counterterrorism experts have indicated to me that the procedures that they have been putting in place are the only ones right now that they consider to be effective against the kind of threat that we saw in the Christmas Day bombing.

All this because of the little ol’ Underwear Bomber?  Now, I realize that the failed Islamic Terrorist setting fire to himself on that plane was an embarrassment, Scooter, but why are you using police-state tactics, instead of using the profiling system employed by Israel and other nations?  Do you want  America’s Airlines to be financially damaged, so that you can benevolently bail them out like you did America’s Financial structure and Automotive Industry?

In an interview with ABC News, Isaac Yeffet, the former head of security for the Israeli airline El Al, says the only way to secure the skies is to employ highly educated, well-trained agents to question passengers. Forget bomb-sniffing “puffers” or scanners that can see through passengers’ clothes. Yeffet said that he has seen many terrorists outsmart airport security over the years, and as technology improves, so do the terrorists’ methods.

Yeffet, who now runs his own firm, Yeffet Security Consultants, says:

We are dealing with a sophisticated enemy who knows how to beat our technology.

Evidently, our administration, as usual, believes that they are smarter than all those other countries who have proven that profiling is successful.

At least, I hope that’s the reason.  It couldn’t have anything to do with the president’s political ideology, could it?  Hold on.  This just in:

Mark Knoller via Twitter:  Obama joked that he’d have AF-1 fly home via South America so he could see Hugo Chavez.  Some joke.

Sources:  sun-sentinel.com, twitter.com, msnbc.com, abcnews.go.com