STAFF NEWS & ANALYSIS
Senators Complain; Homeland Security Listens
By Staff News & Analysis - October 20, 2011

There was a rare moment of bipartisanship on Capitol Hill today when members of the Senate Judiciary Committee expressed their frustrations about airline screening procedures to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, with Judiciary Chairman Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., calling some of the TSA procedures "baloney." Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, raised the issue of passengers not wanting to pass through advanced imaging technology (AIT) screening machines. "I've been getting a lot of complaints lately about the checks … – ABC News

Dominant Social Theme: We just won't take it anymore. Things have got to change or we'll … do something. We'll have another hearing or something. Or we'll raise our voices. Or we'll swear off cocktails the way prisoners stop eating food. Anyway, we'll do SOMETHING.

Free-Market Analysis: The US Senate is at it again, complaining about Homeland Security and its increasingly Draconian and authoritarian ways. The mavens at Homeland Security have provided American citizens who choose to fly with a Hobson's Choice: They can either be poisoned, apparently, by radioactive scanners or groped by TSA agents.

The Senators don't like this state of affairs and have said so for nearly a year or more. They just did again (see article excerpt above) and probably will have the same impact as they've had previously: None at all. It is of course a kind of power-elite sub-dominant social theme: Democracy is at work and the people's representatives are in charge. Only they are not.

More and more, the US Congress resembles the entirely ineffective Senate under Rome's great emperors. The Senate remained long after it had lost any semblance of authority. That's what is taking place today in the US and actually in the West generally. Power long ago passed into unelected hands, but now, increasingly, it is obvious … and public. Here's some more from the article:

Napolitano attempted to explain to the senators why the pat-down procedures were necessary. "I can say the answer in one word, and that's Abdulmutallab," Napolitano said in reference to underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who pleaded guilty to terrorism offenses in Detroit last week …

"Sometimes, you get the impression they almost want to make you miss your plane because you have to go through the pat-down," Leahy groused to Napolitano. "I do provide a lot of amusement for people who are taking cell phone pictures of me getting a pat-down," Leahy told Napolitano "When I do it, the TSA agent tells them, 'Well, you know there's a law against taking photographs.' …

"I always comply, but I'm just saying — and I don't ever raise a fuss about it, nor would I," Hatch told Napolitano, "but it seems to me … maybe I look like a terrorist. I don't know, but I don't think so. I'm really very kind and loving, you know."

"Senator, I will give you that," Napolitano told Hatch. "You look kind and loving, and we should be able to handle this and also look at some of your [concerns.]"

This is really wretched dialogue. There is ample evidence that the 9/11 narrative as constructed by the powers-that-be is nothing like what has been stated – and surely needs a new investigation at the very least. Meanwhile, the FBI stands accused in numerous articles and by whistleblowers with entrapping many of the young men its top bureaucrats trumpet as Islamic terrorists.

The war on terror itself is obviously falsified in many ways; lawless elements of the military-industrial complex along with both Bush and Obama US presidential administrations have embroiled the US and its NATO allies in something like eight wars throughout the Middle East and Africa.

America and the West's economy is collapse and Homeland Security itself is contributing to that collapse by making it ever more difficult and invasive for air travelers. There is also evidence that Homeland Security's brutal ineffectiveness has greatly diminished tourism to America, further aggravating the economic downturn.

Within this context of growing authoritarianism, official ineptitude, falsifications and cover-ups, and the cancerous, metastasizing growth of the US military-industrial complex itself, senators involved in this latest Homeland Security hearing could only grouse weakly about the inconvenience of the current state of air travel.

In fact, almost everything the US Federal government does these days, beginning with the Patriot Act itself, is unconstitutional or at least questionable. There has been a kind of overt constitutionalist coup in the US, but this seems to go unnoticed by the current crop of senators who are more interested in earmarks than in restoring the constitutional balance.

Long ago, the Senate began to declare its incompetence with absolutely ludicrous displays of ineptitude and irretrievably wretched rhetoric. Millions are being poisoned by depleted uranium weapons in NATO's theatres of war, and millions more are dying of hunger around the world.

America and Europe face crushing austerity and economic ruin as a result of the West's endlessly inflationary central banking system and protests are exploding in Europe and the US virtually every day.

"I'm really kind and loving, you know," Senator Orin Hatch says.

"Senator, I will give you that," Napolitano says.

After Thoughts

The end of the Civil War and the victory by the North and New York banking interests really marked the end of the US Republic and any claim America had to "exceptionalism." It does take time, however, for civil institutions to degrade and begin to show outwardly and nakedly the corruption inside. That time is obviously now.

Posted in STAFF NEWS & ANALYSIS
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