VA Viper

Saturday, May 14, 2011

TX to TSA: Hands Off My “Anus, Sexual Organ, Buttocks, or Breast”

You can’t get any more explicit than the language in a bill passed by the Texas House of Representatives late Thursday that spells out how far the Transportation and Security Administration can—and can’t—go in its airport security pat-downs.

The measure makes it a criminal offense for any public servant to conduct a search in which “the anus, sexual organ, buttocks, or breast of another person” are touched, including through clothing. The bill also wades into Fourth Amendment territory by prohibiting searches “that would be offensive to a reasonable person.” The Fourth Amendment protects citizens against unreasonable searches and seizures.

HotAir's The Greenroom.

The Coming Postal Bailout

Congress wants taxpayers to save mail worker pensions.

WSJ.com: If this were a private business, the obvious response to these losses would be urgent cost-cutting to avoid insolvency. Instead, Postal Service management recently concluded negotiations offering the 205,000-member American Postal Workers Union a new four-and-a-half-year contract that will provide a 3.5% pay raise over three years, dole out automatic cost of living wage hikes after 2012, and expand no-layoff protections.

Postal officials say this is the best deal they could get and that, had they not agreed to it, an arbitrator would have been even more generous to the union. But given that 80% of postal costs are for wages and benefits, this contract is unhinged from all fiscal reality.

What If the U.S. Treasury Defaults?

WSJ.com: "When do you generally get action from governments? When their bond market blows up." But that isn't happening now, he says, because the Fed is "aiding and abetting" the politicians' "reckless behavior."

Social Security deficits now 'permanent'

Washington Times: Social Security will run a permanent yearly deficit when looking at the program’s tax revenues compared to what it must pay out in benefits.