Here’s another round-up of some articles about the TSA’s policy, which might be summed up as “let us play with our X-ray glasses or we will feel you up.”

David Harsanyi says that there’s been a switcheroo in the way that lefties and conservatives approach civil liberties.

Of lefties, he says, “Not so long ago, the left positioned itself as the defender of innocents against the just-one-tiny-step-away- from-fascism of the Bush administration’s war on terror. The Constitution was sacred, especially when we faced danger – and even more especially when a Republican was president …. Yet, today, left-wing pundits … implore Americans to grow up, become better automatons, get moving, and submit.

Conservatives don’t escape unscathed: “I simply can’t believe that we would be witnessing anywhere near the levels of conservative outrage regarding the TSA’s new security measures were we sitting in, say, 2005.”

Ross Douthat finds some value in the hypocrisy: “Given how much authority is concentrated in Washington, especially in the executive branch, even a hypocritical and inconsistent opposition is better than no opposition at all.”

Jeffrey Rosen says the public hasn’t, for the most part, agreed with civil libertarian concerns about the TSA. But are the new procedures constitutional? He reviews a 2007 ruling from Judge Alito, now of the Supreme Court and then of a federal appeals court. Rosen says, “As currently used in U.S. airports, the new full-body scanners fail” Alito’s tests. the ruling then dealt with magnetometers and wanding.

Some airports in Europe, he says, are using a less intrusive scanning technology that is actually a step ahead on the development cycle, compared with the machines the TSA is just now rolling out.

As for the TSA machines, Rosen says, “They reveal a great deal of innocent but embarrassing information and are remarkably ineffective at revealing low-density contraband.”

Dana Milibank says that adopting the Israeli method of airport security is a no-go, mostly because it would require 3 million new federal employees, and be quite expensive. Joel Dreyfuss, meanwhile, says that Israeli methods of security rely heavily on profiling by skin color–flying while Arab, if you will. That would be a problem in a country such as ours with a history of Jim Crow laws based on skin color. But it’s possible to profile by behavior, a fact Dreyfuss omits.

Dreyfuss concludes, “I suspect the real reason for the outrage over body scanners and pat-downs is that the majority of Americans are finally experiencing the kind of discomfiting scrutiny that has long been routine for those who are repeatedly profiled and humiliated. As long as it was someone else, it didn’t matter.”

He’s partly right. Support for the show-me-your-genitals policy is higher among the non-flying public than among frequent-flyers, so there is the “it doesn’t affect me, so what’s the big deal” sentiment.

Sam Staley, meanwhile, refutes the claim made by the TSA that there’s “no right to fly.” He says, “some of us probably thought the the right to travel from point A to point B was fundamental to the values of individual liberty and personal freedom that were cornerstones of the U.S. form of government.”

He also asks that given that Timothy McVeigh used a truck to destroy a federal building in Oklahoma city, “isn’t any driver a potential terrorist?”

Finally, the site Stratfor Global Intelligence says we need to look for the bomber not just the bomb.

From The Detroit News:

http://apps.detnews.com/apps/blogs/watercooler/index.php?blogid=1142