Help us build pro-con lists:

Body Scanner pro-con HERE .

TSA pat down pro-con HERE.

Airport Security Square This

Check out the facts on Airport Security HERE

Ross Douthat: On T.S.A. body scans, we're partisans first, ideologues second

"Imagine, for a moment, that George W. Bush had been president when the Transportation Security Administration decided to let Thanksgiving travelers choose between exposing their nether regions to a body scanner or enduring a private security massage. Democrats would have been outraged at yet another Bush-era assault on civil liberties... And Republicans would have leaped to the Bush administration's defense, while accusing liberals of going soft on terrorism."  Read the whole article HERE .

Radiation received during body scan is equivalent to 2 minutes of flying at 30,000 feet HERE. (See Politifact fact check of this HERE.)

T.S.A. information on airport screening HERE.

Do Body Scanners Make Us Safer?  A debate HERE .

Center for Investigative Reporting HERE.

Jeffrey Rosen: The TSA is invasive, annoying - and unconstitutional HERE.

Electronic Privacy Information Center (suing the TSA) HERE.

The TSA Blog
TSA Week in Review: 30 Loaded Guns Found This Week in Carry-on Bags
It’s Time to go Scuba Diving - Travel Tips for Divers

The Blog @ Homeland Security
Atlantic’s First Tropical System Comes Thirteen Days Early
Photo: Secretary Napolitano Remembers Victims of the Holocaust at Dachau Concentration Camp

This is your chance to have your say. Simply click on "Create new op-ed page" in the left sidebar toolbox on this page (you must be logged in). Then when you're finished with your page, return to this block and insert something like this:
[My Brilliant Op-Ed] by the Queen of England

We're up to the same-old same-old when it comes to the civic discourse on the very important topic of airport security and the newly instituted T.S.A. body scanning protocol:  Silly and circular discussions have taken the place of a debate with good facts, good thinking and plain old good sense.  We've started this page hoping that you can help us gather resources that will promote a dialogue befitting the great country we are.  Add important information in this main section, add important facts on the right side along with links to must-reads.  You may even want to toss in your own op-ed.

As opponents of the procedure likely head to court to sort this out, George Washington University law professor Jeffrey Rosen handicaps it:

Although the Supreme Court hasn't evaluated airport screening technology, lower courts have emphasized, as the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ruled in 2007, that "a particular airport security screening search is constitutionally reasonable provided that it 'is no more extensive nor intensive than necessary, in the light of current technology, to detect the presence of weapons or explosives.' "

In a 2006 opinion for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit, then-Judge Samuel Alito stressed that screening procedures must be both "minimally intrusive" and "effective" - in other words, they must be "well-tailored to protect personal privacy," and they must deliver on their promise of discovering serious threats. Alito upheld the practices at an airport checkpoint where passengers were first screened with walk-through magnetometers and then, if they set off an alarm, with hand-held wands. He wrote that airport searches are reasonable if they escalate "in invasiveness only after a lower level of screening disclose[s] a reason to conduct a more probing search."

Here's how the fourth amendment reads:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Photo credits: Alice Daer (Wiki front page image) Trey Ratcliff (Runway image) and Steve Kaiser (Ziploc bag)