In Pa, Alabama, and Texas, drivers pulled over, asked for blood and saliva

No, this isn't an April Fool's joke. No, it isn't a scene out of a dystopian novel. It's just another day in the good ol' USA.

In Alabama, in Texas, and now in Pennsylvania, drivers have been flagged down by police and told to pull over into a parking lot so that a survey company can "ask" them for blood and saliva.

What exactly are they "surveying"?

TSA-style gropes at Coachella Music Festival

Another of my TSA News posts, originally published April 24, 2013:

As some of us have been saying for years, and taking no end of shit for it from know-nothing observers, it was only a matter of time before the tactics of the TSA moved from the airport to other venues. And now that day is here.

US Security Forces Harassing People Even Before They Travel

When are you people going to fucking get it??

Our government is spying on all of us and using the information it collects not only to gate-rape us at the airport, which the masses of sheeple don't give a shit about, but to target and harass people based purely on their ethnicity. 

Do you even pay attention to what's going on in this country?

Wait -- lemme guess -- "it's okay as long as it doesn't happen to me!"

TSA still assaulting, abusing passengers - so what else is new?

The Arizona Republic filed a FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) request, and guess what they found out? That the TSA abuses people at the checkpoint.

Americans: more concerned about stuff than about their rights

Comment I just left at this NYT article, which may or may not get printed. If you’re so inclined, you can do likewise. Call me crazy, but I think getting your privates poked by a government goon is more important than how much shit you can shove into the overhead (and wish I could’ve used that language!):

Wow. Americans are pathetic. They scream and fight over how much crap they can take on a plane (take less, people, or pay up and shut up), yet when it comes to being abused by the TSA, it’s one big “meh.” 

Land of the Free. Uh-huh. 

(Photo: Alan Cleaver/Flickr Creative Commons)

TSA Gropers Working Without Pay

Ha ha ha ha! Best news I've heard all week:

Paul Revere and the NSA

As always, click to enlarge:

Supreme Court Wipes Its Ass with the Constitution -- Again

I'd like to say this story is unbelievable, but alas, it's all too believable. We barely have a Bill of Rights anymore, so what's one more amendment down the crapper?

History repeats itself with TSA’s strip-search tactics

I have done over 250 posts for TSA News in the almost two years of its existence. I'll eventually move them all over to this blog. In the meantime, here's one of them, from December 5, 2011. Unfortunately -- and not surprisingly -- everything I wrote in it is still true:

History repeats itself with TSA’s strip-search tactics - Dec 5, 2011

“The more we do to you, the less you seem to believe we are doing it.”

What Kind of Man? (or woman, for that matter?)

I have posted and reposted this comment all over the place since I first saw it at Time magazine in June of 2011:

Question: What kind of a man knowingly surrenders his own daughter to one of us government workers to be molested, standing by passively even as her private parts are fondled while she screams “Daddy Daddy, please help me!” 

Answer: an American man. 

I speak only to you men when I say you gutless cowards will be lining up to hand over your wives and daughters in our airports, it will happen hundreds of time each day across our USA. You had better start explaining to your children that we government employees are allowed to touch their private parts whenever we want; it will make the whole thing a lot less dramatic. Seriously, the 1st time is always the worst. The next time you get molested will not feel as disturbing as we accommodate you to our abuses.

-Ksiadz_Robak

(Cross-posted at TSA News.) 

UK tries to put the screws to Glenn Greenwald

Just in case you didn't already know the authorities own you, they're going to make sure you do:

WTF is wrong with you people??

UPDATED BELOW.

Nah, we don't live in a police state. As I always say, it's just the ranting of my fevered imagination.

That's why, in a country where there are over 100 violent SWAT actions every day, this latest little simulation didn't happen either. I'm just making it up. Check that, WJRT, the ABC news affiliate in Rossford, Ohio, is making it up. Somebody just woke up on the wrong side of the bed one morning and decided to make shit up:

Black women’s hair once again focus of clueless TSA

My Master List of TSA Crimes and Abuses is full of stories like this -- and worse -- where a black woman has her hair pawed by a blue-shirted goon in the name of "security." But apparently people still don't get it.

Matt Wuerker of Politico

Pulitzer-Prize-winning political cartoonist Matt Wuerker. As always, click to enlarge:

Voltaire

Rectal Scrapings: Another Brilliant Cartoon by Ted Rall

As I've written before, if you don't know the political cartoons of Ted Rall, you're missing the boat. Here's his take on the latest revelations about the NSA's illegal snooping -- its "XKeyscore" program (don'tchya just love their cutesy little names?), which is getting more coverage in foreign press such as the Guardian than in the American press (gee, what a surprise). Click the cartoon to enlarge it: