While the underwear and shoe bombers may have been unsuccessful in their attempts to bring down a jetliner in flight, they were successful in inducing other manifestations of terror. The US has been installing whole body scanners capable of penetrating clothing so that nameless and faceless citizens employed by TSA or whomever may inspect our body topography. In addition to this radiological peepshow during check-in at the airport, TSA security has been authorized to pat down our private parts.
Cause: Two imbeciles board airplanes and attempt to initiate their explosives. They failed. Effect: The USA, the most powerful military-industrial complex for maybe hundreds of parsecs in all directions, is so freaked out by the presence of a mouse on the kitchen floor that it contrives to supply absolute security. History is full of many examples of foolish attempts by states to provide absolute security. The impulse to attain absolute security becomes the lever by which authoritarian states pry liberty from the hands of its people.
The members of the booboisie who promulgate this foolish notion are not automatically bad people. As viewed from lunar orbit, their intentions are superficially honorable. The gaping flaw is that they accept the premise that trading in the protection against unreasonable search and seizure for what can only be a miniscule uptick in security, is a fair trade.
It is most assuredly not a fair trade, but it seems to have already been made for us. I strenuously object.
Update: A friend advises that there are already countermeasures available f0r the scanners. I would recommend a screen printed lead-based paint with an appropriately artful design that would hide, or perhaps exaggerate the body part to be shielded. Alternatively, a witty slogan may be printed. Perhaps we can source the lead-based paint in China?
Lamentations on Chemistry 
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.
One perceives no ambiguities therein. We will not defer to vermin defining truth and morality by convenience of the moment. Thanksgiving air travel is upon us. Riot. String up avatars of jackbooted State compassion as a lesson in the primacy of Constitutional law and why the Bill of Rights was adopted.
When every citizen can be voluntarily armed at its own expense, what has government to fear from outsiders? Common law is more important hat statutory law. An armed society is a polite society.
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. And now, a checklist:
He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislature.
He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:
For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states:
For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing taxes on us without our consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury
The progression of history is a helix. Another turn of the screw is upon us. Will you be the driver or the screwed?
I strenuously object, too. My hope is that large numbers of people will protest, send angry letters and stop flying, but most people are sheep and will most likely do what they’re told to do. With these new policies, the last line of our national anthem needs to change. We’re no longer the land of the free and the home of the brave…
What if people hold an indecent finger gesture while they’re being scanned? Would the security goons take ’em down? I’m not sure what my personal reaction will be when I inevitably get scanned. Perhaps a t-shirt printed with a radio opaque ink with some rebellious yet witty statement.
This has nothing whatsoever to do with this topic, but I figured we all need a little levity at this point. Science stand up comedy:
I laughed so hard I woke up the entire neighborhood, and my non-scientist relatives just shook their heads and stared at me.
I’d think by now you’d be used to people staring at you …
Yes, but usually they have to buy a ticket to do so.