PhoneBoy Says

The chairman of British Airways has launched an attack on "completely redundant" airport checks and said the UK should stop "kowtowing" to US demands for increased security.

The comments by Martin Broughton reflect broader industry and passenger frustration over the steady accumulation of rules on everything from onboard liquids to hand baggage that have blossomed since the September 11 terrorist attacks.

via edition.cnn.com

Most of the so-called security rules that have come into play since 9/11 don't really increase security. Taking off my shoes? Please. Taking all your liquids out for scanning? Please. Even the Israelis don't make you do that stuff at Ben Gurion, though curiously, they don't even let you board a US-bound flight with large liquids in your carryon that you bought post-security.

I agree with the sentiment from the chairman of British Airways, though. Instead of just adding inane check after inane check, let's start over and come up with a minimal set of checks that make sense and cover the important areas.

I encountered my first airport naked body scanner while flying out of California today, and of course I decided to "opt out" of the scan. You do this by telling the blue-shirted TSA agents that you simply wish to opt out of the body scanner. Here's what happened after that:

via naturalnews.com

I actually did receive a pat-down once without having to "opt out" of the naked body scanners. It was at Sea-Tac and they didn't have the scanners yet, though I understand they are coming. Apparently, the TSA agent thought my clothes were too loosely fitting and decided I need a quick pat-down. It covered the extremities and my trunk--without the "back of the hand" crotch pat down.

I have only seen the naked body scanners with my own eyes in one place: the International terminals at SFO. At that time, I went through the machine, even though I felt weird doing so. Everything I'm reading suggests I should opt-out, if for no other reason than to stand up for my rights. I'll make sure to arrive extra early so the TSA agents have plenty of time to "screen me."

The only proper functions of government are: the police, to protect you from criminals; the army, to protect you from foreign invaders; and the courts, to protect your property and contracts from breach and fraud by others, to settle disputes by rational rules, according to objective law.

Too bad there is no government on earth that adheres to these simple rules…

No one else's truth can be Absolute Truth for me. Others can share with me their thoughts, others can give me their ideas, but I have to make up my own mind about what is true for me.

via spiritlibrary.com

"Absolute truth" is defined as inflexible reality: fixed, invariable, unalterable facts. For example, it is a fixed, invariable, unalterable fact that there are absolutely no square circles and there are absolutely no round squares. That is because squares and circles are defined by truly objective rules that are not subject to debate.

Absolute Truth in a religious context is generally not objective. Most religions define some things as "unknowable" or that we must accept certain things that we cannot verify with rational thought (i.e. we have to accept it on faith). As Ayn Rand put it in Atlas Shrugged:

They keep telling you what it is not, but never tell you what it is. All their identifications consist of negating: God is that which no human mind can know, they say—and proceed to demand that you consider it knowledge—God is non-man, heaven is non-earth, soul is non-body, virtue is non-profit, A is non-A, perception is non-sensory, knowledge is non-reason. Their definitions are not acts of defining, but of wiping out.

Absolute Truths not based on objective principles are not Absolute Truth, regardless of who--or what--they come from.

The thing that strikes me most about this case is the realization that no one is immune to the stresses and misfortunes of life, but that is not a legal basis for the state to strip us of our rights. That and if a judge won't follow the plainly written law, why should anyone?

via examiner.com

This guy checked with the New Jersey State Police on how he could legally transport his firearms. There are clear statutes regarding how this can be done. He followed them. But yet this judge decided not to inform the jury of these exemptions, and the guy sits in jail, wrongly convicted of a crime he didn't commit.

If we can't count on our judges to uphold the laws as they are written, not how they might wish them to be written, who can we trust?