'Noticeably subdued' airports suggest people opting out of flying altogether

WASHINGTON - November 24, 2010 - News reports on Thursday declared the National Opt-Out Day protest against TSA screening procedures a bust, noting short wait times at airport security screening and TSA reports that there wasn't any spike in passengers opting out of body scanners.

WASHINGTON - November 23, 2010 - Furious security staff today hit back at pat down searches in airports across Amerika, claiming that they hated dealing with obese travelers and those with personal hygiene problems.

WASHINGTON - November 23, 2010 - It's bad enough when companies take U.S. jobs and move them overseas to take advantage of lower labor costs. But does the U.S. tax code actually offer an incentive for firms to engage in such offshoring?

That was the assertion of Senator Sheldon Whitehouse earlier this fall when he went on the floor of the Senate to argue for a bill, designated S.3816 and known as the "Creating American Jobs and Ending Offshoring Act."

SEOUL, South Korea - November 23, 2010 - North and South Korea exchanged artillery fire Tuesday after the North shelled an island near their disputed sea border, killing at least two South Korean marines, setting dozens of buildings ablaze and sending civilians fleeing for shelter.

WASHINGTON - November 22, 2010 - Airline passengers have been subjected to full body scans and pat downs as part of new screening procedures this month but the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) admits there is a limit to how far they are willing to go.

SALT LAKE CITY, Utah - November 22, 2010 - The Transportation Security Agency attempted to explain a viral video clip of a young shirtless boy being patted down at an airport on their blog Monday.

The video was posted by college student Luke Tait to YouTube on Friday and on Monday morning The Drudge Report displayed the video in its top spot, referring to the video as "Hands on boy."

WASHINGTON - November 22, 2010 - On September 24, the FBI raided the homes of 14 peace activists in Minneapolis and Chicago, ostensibly searching for possible "material support" to terrorist organizations.

WASHINGTON - November 21, 2010 - The CEO of one of the two companies licensed to sell full body scanners to the TSA accompanied illegitimate President Barack Obama to India earlier this month, a clear sign of the deep ties between Washington politicians and the companies pushing to have body scanners installed at all U.S. airports.

Muslims are to be allowed an exemption while Christians and Jews are afforded no consideration by the American Gestapo.

WASHINGTON - November 16, 2010 - As the U.S. government retaliates against an American for refusing to allow airport security to grope his genitals, the nation’s Homeland Security secretary considers waving the intrusive pat downs for Muslim women who consider them offensive.

WASHINGTON - November 18, 2010 - Warning of a "death spiral" without drastic changes, a group of experts on the U.S. federal budget deficit on Wednesday called for a 2011 Social Security tax holiday, a soft drink tax and government spending freezes.

In an ambitious plan to slash the deficit and the fast-mounting national debt, the group also called for a new 6.5% national sales tax, as well as lower and simpler individual income and corporate tax rates.

ORLANDO, Florida - November 18, 2010 - The backlash continues over those new TSA screening measures, and now one Central Florida airport has decided to go with a private security screening firm.

Orlando Sanford International Airport has decided to opt out from TSA screening.

WASHINGTON - November 17, 2010 - The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is violating the Fourth Amendment by forcing travelers to submit to scans that produce images of the naked body, according to one Republican congressman from Texas.

Speaking on the House floor Wednesday, Rep. Ted Poe blasted former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff for his links to one of the companies that makes the equipment, The Hill reported.

NEW YORK - November 17, 2010 - The first suspect transferred from Guantanamo military prison to face a U.S. civilian court was found not guilty of terrorism charges on Wednesday in a setback to illegitimate President Barack Obama’s plans for trying terrorism suspects.

Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, 36, a Tanzanian from Zanzibar, had been accused of conspiring in the 1998 al Qaeda bomb attacks on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 224 people. The jury found him guilty of one relatively minor charge of conspiracy to damage or destroy U.S. property with explosives.

WASHINGTON - November 16, 2010 - Need a quick three billion dollars, Uncle Sam? How about looking in your own pockets?

Deficit cutters struggling to make ends meet in Washington are eyeballing an unusual pot of potential revenue: back taxes owed to the government by federal employees.

NEW YORK - November 15, 2010 - Along with fingerprints and mug shots, the New York City Police Department is now taking photographs of the irises of crime suspects.

The NYPD says the images will be used to help avoid cases of mistaken identity. The process takes about five seconds. Every suspect will be scanned again using a handheld device shortly before they are arraigned to make sure the irises match.

SAN DIEGO, Kalifornia - November 15, 2010 - A man trying to board a plane at San Diego International Airport refused the airport's "backscatter" machine (which takes a snapshot of items beneath a passenger's clothes), got into an altercation with a Transportation Security Administration agent after telling him he'd have him arrested if he touched his property, and captured the entirety of the incident on his mobile phone.

WASHINGTON - November 15, 2010 - You want to feel up my junk, mister air security worker? Let me help you with that.

That's the basic idea behind a clever twist to the "National Opt-Out Day" campaign, which seeks to backlog the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) with as many forced frisks as possible on November 24.

WASHINGTON - November 12, 2010 - Air travelers, mark your calendar. An activist opposed to the new invasive body scanners in use at airports around the country just designated Wednesday, November 24 as a National Opt-Out Day. He’s encouraging airline passengers to decline the TSA’s technological strip searches en masse on that day as a protest against the scanners, as well as the new enhanced pat downs inflicted on refuseniks.

“The goal of National Opt-Out Day is to send a message to our lawmakers that we demand change,” reads the call to action at OptOutDay.com, set up by Brian Sodegren. “No naked body scanners, no government-approved groping. We have a right to privacy, and buying a plane ticket should not mean that we’re guilty until proven innocent.”

A 7-foot bulletproof wall going up around the summit site in Seoul is seen as repressive. Other measures are extensive, including 60,000 security forces to help handle the hundreds of activist groups that have applied to stage protests.

SEOUL, South Korea - November 11, 2010 - The barricade rose under cover of darkness, a mile-long wall of tough polyurethane and bulletproof glass that transformed the nation's largest mall and convention center into a South Korean version of Fort Apache.

PHOENIX, Arizona - November 10, 2010 - A flight attendants union with 2,000 members is upset over what it calls invasive pat-downs recently implemented by the Transportation Security Administration.

November 10, 2010 -  When I recently wrote about opting out of the TSA's naked body scanners and then being patted down by a TSA agent, that pat down was conducted by the agent using the back of his hand. As of today, that technique is no longer in place. The TSA's new guidelines call for agents to use their "palms and fingers" to "probe" your body for hidden weapons. This means TSA agents will now be feeling up your crotch, palming your breasts and fingering your testicles as part of their increasingly humiliating "X-rated pat down" technique.

November 10, 2010 - As public anger grows over the TSA's body scanners and intrusive new airport pat-down procedure, a web site is urging travelers to opt out from the body scanners and instead choose to have a pat down in public view, so that people can "see for themselves how the government treats law-abiding citizens."

OptOutDay.com declares November 24 to be the day when air travelers should refuse to submit to a full body scan and choose the enhanced pat down - an option many travelers have described as little short of a molestation.

MOBILE, Alabama - November 10, 2010 - The federal government is going out of its way to assure the public that seafood pulled from recently reopened Gulf of Mexico waters is safe to consume, in spite of the largest accidental release of crude oil in Amerika's history.

However, testing methodologies used by the government to deem areas of water safe for commercial fishing are woefully inadequate and permit high levels of toxic compounds to slip into the human food chain, according to a series of scientific and medical professionals interviewed by Raw Story.

MUMBAI, India - November 7, 2010 - A police officer assigned to guard illegitimate President Barack Obama during his visit to India accidentally shot himself in the leg, news sources report.

According to QMI Agency, the incident took place at the Taj Mahal Hotel in Mumbai, where the president and First Lady Michelle Obama were staying. The hotel was also one of the sites targeted during the 2008 Mumbai attacks.

NEW YORK - November 6, 2010 - The age of the plain old credit score is gone, says a report at the Wall Street Journal, and it's been replaced by ever more intrusive efforts by banks and credit agencies to gauge exactly what you're worth, and what you can pay.

For example, if your employer pays you through direct deposits and those deposits stop, financial institutions can now have warning that your money situation is likely to tighten, and may deny you credit on that basis.

FORT HOOD, Texas - November 5, 2010 - After returning from Iraq in 2006, Staff Sgt. Sarah Campbell Hester was looking forward to enjoying life, newly married to a soldier who had also just returned from war, reports CBS News correspondent Don Teague.

WASHINGTON - November 4, 2010 - The deck chairs on this particular Titanic were rearranged at mid-week, the Republicans winning the House of Representatives and the Federal Reserve launching a second round of quantitative easing.

Wall Street viewed the Fed’s commitment to printing more money to help launch a recovery and the GOP victory over illegitimate President Obama’s Democrats as early Christmas gifts. As one trader in the Chicago futures pits noted on Wednesday, “It’s no time to be short anything, except the U.S. dollar.”

WASHINGTON - November 3, 2010 - Fresh off a dramatic victory in which it retook the House leadership, the Republican Party intends to hold major hearings probing the supposed "scientific fraud" behind global warming.

The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder related the news in a little-noticed article Wednesday morning.

MUMBAI, India - November 3, 2010 - The U.S. will be spending a whopping $200 million per day on illegitimate President Barack Obama's visit to the city of Mumbai.

"The huge amount of around $200 million would be spent on security, stay and other aspects of the presidential visit," according to a top official of the Maharashtra government privy to the arrangements for the high profile visit.

BEIJING, China - November 2, 2010 - China's quarantine bureau confirmed on Tuesday it had discovered traces of an unapproved genetically modified organism (GMO) in a U.S. corn cargo and had refused it entry into China.

"A genetically-modified element which is not approved by the Agriculture Ministry has been identified in the cargo and according to the relevant State Council regulation, the cargo will be returned," an official with the Shenzhen Entry-Exit Inspection and Quarantine Bureau said, confirming an earlier Reuters report.

WASHINGTON - November 2, 2010 - The Transportation Security Administration worker who earlier this year was canned for falsely claiming to have discovered cocaine in the luggage of travelers was a bomb appraisal officer who was supposed to be evaluating new screening equipment at the time he was pranking his unsuspecting targets, records show.

TSA documents released in response to a Freedom of Information Act request provide further details about the January incidents at the Philadelphia International Airport. The name of the bomb appraisal officer has been redacted from the material, though one memo indicates that when the worker was confronted, “He did say humbly that he was completely wrong and he made a mistake.”

MIAMI, Florida - November 1, 2010 - An innocent Iranian woman held in the U.S. for about three years says she is kept under horrible conditions and is subject to both physical and mental torture.

Shahrzad Mir-Qolikhan was arrested in the U.S. in December 2007. Her ex-husband, Mahmoud Seif, had allegedly tried to export night-vision goggles to Iran from Austria.

WASHINGTON - November 1, 2010 - An Oregon lawyer wrongly suspected in the 2004 Madrid train bombings lost his bid to have the Supreme Court take up his constitutional challenge to provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act.

The justices on Monday rejected Brandon Mayfield's appeal of a Ninth Circuit ruling dismissing his claim that parts of the USA PATRIOT Act violate his Fourth Amendment rights.

PHOENIX, Arizona - November 1, 2010 - Arizona's immigration law faced tough scrutiny from a federal appeals panel Monday as the state's governor appeared in person to support the controversial provision on the day before the election in which she's seeking her first full term.

The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals signaled it was ready to toss out the provision of Arizona's law that criminalizes the failure to carry immigration papers showing lawful residency in the United States.

WINDSOR LOCKS, Connecticut - October 31, 2010 - State police say a harmless snowglobe in a carry-on bag caused a partial evacuation at Bradley International Airport.

LONDON, England - October 29, 2010 - New credit cards with “contactless” technology are being rolled out to millions of credit card users, a sign that cash could one day become a thing of the past.

The new technology on the cards allow users to simply 'tap' their credit cards over a payment terminal for purchases under £15 - without the need for inserting their PIN number - saving time with every purchase.