This IS A Joke, Right?

The ACLU has got to be kidding, doesn't it? They can't honestly believe this, can they? The Transportation Safety Administration is ready to begin testing a "backscatter" X-ray machine to screen passengers. The machines produce a fuzzy outline of the person under the clothing. And the ACLU things this pictures will have "high commercial value" on the internet.

WASHINGTON — The federal government plans this month to launch the nation's first airport screening system that takes potentially revealing X-ray photos of travelers in an effort to find bombs and other weapons.

Transportation Security Administration screeners at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport will test a "backscatter" machine that could vastly improve weapons detection but has been labeled a "virtual strip search" by the American Civil Liberties Union. Backscatter can show clear images of nude bodies.

At Phoenix and another yet-to-be-decided test airport, the machines will blur or shade images to obscure body parts and medical devices. The TSA also will look at using the machines in subways.

"It's time to get them out and get feedback from [screeners] and the traveling public," said Randy Null, TSA assistant administrator. The TSA has been considering the machines since 2002 while struggling with privacy issues.

Null said the TSA is now "very comfortable" with privacy protections manufacturers have built into the machines, which scatter low-intensity X-rays to peer under clothing for hidden items.

Barry Steinhardt, head of the ACLU's technology and liberty program, said operating the backscatter machines at airports will pave the way for widespread use — and abuse. "As this technology becomes commonplace, you're going to start seeing those images all over the Internet," Steinhardt said. "These images are going to have high commercial value."

Ed Morrisey found a site that actually shows examples of the pictures the machine produces. This is going to be the hot new internet phenom? You have got to be kidding. As the good captain points out:

The notion that these will become the prurient hit of the Internet in an age of Britney Spears crotch-flashing and the wide variety of much more well-defined porn is simply hilarious.

Stuff like this is why the ACLU is descending into self-parody these days. This is probably the single stupidest statement I have seen coming from them yet. (But I still don't get why people are interested in Britney's beaver.)

There Is A Bright Side To This

A police officer had to use his Taser in the line of duty. It was the only way to get the python to stop eating a man. The man had been trying to feed a rat to his daughter's pet python, when the reptile decided that the man's left arm looked much tastier.

Steve Crilly, 47, was feeding a rat to the eight-foot-long albino Burmese python, which belongs to his daughter, when it when it bit his left hand and wrapped tightly around his left arm Wednesday night, Uniontown patrolman Ray Miller said.

"The snake was on his arm and was eating his hand," Miller told the Herald-Standard of Uniontown for Friday's editions. Crilly "was very calm, considering there was a good bit of blood," he said.

In an effort to free the man without permanently harming the snake, Miller said he shot the animal with his Taser, a gun that sends an electric shock through wired darts. The snake immediately went limp and released its grip.

Crilly was treated by paramedics at the scene for what Miller called "a nasty cut" on his hand. The snake was uninjured and remained at the home, Miller said. Crilly did not immediately return a message left at his home Thursday by The Associated Press.

When are people going to listen to us about the Animal Uprising™? People should be converting these "pets" (who are really enemy agents) into something useful. With a python a nice pair of boots comes to mind. But anyway, the good news is that the python hadn't been Taser-proofed yet. Like the cows and the pigs. So there is still time to think about those boots or a nice handbag.

Fixing The Damage

Outgoing RNC chairman Ken Mehlman warned Republicans that it was time to fix the problems that led to the election defeat. If not, it will be a long time in the wilderness.

 MIAMI, Nov. 30 — Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman warned a somber and diminished gathering of GOP governors that the party will face years in the political wilderness unless it corrects the mistakes that led to last month's election losses.

"If we shrug our shoulders and say, 'It was just a fluke, a perfect storm of factors out of our control,' then we will lose again in 2008," Mehlman told the Republican Governors Association at its annual meeting, as he prepares to step down from the RNC at the end of the year.

"If that is the approach we take, then we are destined to spend far more than one term in the minority," Mehlman added. "And we as a party will deserve it."

On Nov. 7, Democrats captured a majority of governorships, as well as control of the House and the Senate, for the first time since the Republican revolution of 1994. The remaining GOP governors will assume a higher national profile while their party is out of power in Washington and may find themselves having to help lead the way for Republican initiatives and a political comeback.

"You're the greatest and most innovative think tank in politics," Mehlman told the governors. "And now, more than ever, our party and our nation need you to do what you do best . . . to change government for changing times."

This is not new stuff. A number of people (myself included) have been calling on the Republicans to clean up their act. The idea that ideas come in from the governors are not at all new, either. I've pointed out that a strong set of core beliefs coupled with an ability to give way on other matters was Reagan's genius. Nice to see some others understand that, too.

Realism

Charles Krauthammer asks a simple question: This is realism? He's writing about the so-called realists, led by James Baker and their distinctly unrealistic set of ideas on what to do about Iraq.

Everyone now says that the key to stopping the fighting in Iraq is political — again, as if this were another great discovery. It's been clear for at least a year that a military solution to the insurgency was out of our reach. The military price would have been prohibitive and the victory ephemeral without a political compromise. And that kind of compromise — vesting the Sunnis with proportionate political and financial (i.e. oil) power — is something the Shiites, at least those now comprising the Maliki government, seem incapable of doing.

The United States should be giving Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki a clear ultimatum: If he does not come up with a political solution in two months or cede power to a new coalition that will, the United States will abandon the Green Zone; retire to its bases; move much of its personnel to Kurdistan, where we are welcome and safe; and let the civil war take its course. Let the current Green Zone-protected Iraqi politicians who take their cue from Moqtada al-Sadr face the insurgency alone. That might concentrate their minds on either making a generous offer to the Sunnis or stepping aside for a coalition that would.

The key to progress is political change within Iraq. The newest fashion, however, is to go "regional," engaging Iran and Syria in order to have them pull our chestnuts out of the fire. This idea rests on the notion that both Iran and Syria have an interest in stability in Iraq.

Very hardheaded realist terms: interest, stability, regional powers. But stringing them together to suggest that Iran and Syria share our interests in stability is the height of fantasy. In fact, Iran and Syria have an overriding interest in chaos in Iraq — which is precisely why they each have been abetting the insurgency and fanning civil war.

Perhaps in some long-term future they will want a stable Iraq as a tame client state of the Syria-Iran axis. For now they want chaos. What in God's name will a negotiation with them yield?

At best they might give us a few months to withdraw. But why do we need their help to do that? We can do our withdrawing very well without them. And in return for non-help in a non-solution that is essentially a surrender, Syria would demand to be given a free hand once again in Lebanon — just as, when the United States needed help in Iraq before the Persian Gulf War, then-Secretary of State James Baker gave Lebanon over to Syria as a quid pro quo.

It's actually worse than Krauthammer paints it, I suspect. If we withdraw under these conditions, how long until the same occurs in Afghanistan? Pakistan is already urging NATO to capitulate to the Taliban. How much more strident will those calls become? The realists, in their unrealistic set of beliefs are leading us into an even worse scenario under the guise of preaching stability. We don't need Iran and Syria "helping" us, they will only provide more of the same type of help they already have. Iran has openly announced that they are ready willing and able to invade - they call it sending troops, but only a "realist" would call it assistance.