Scrotal Lifts: They Ain't Plastic Surgery

"The decision [Florence v. Board of Chosen Freeholders] was a defeat for Albert Florence, a finance director for a car dealership who was on his way to a family celebration when a New Jersey state trooper stopped his car and, after finding that he had an outstanding warrant, arrested him.  The warrant had been issued because of a fine that he actually had paid.  Florence was taken to a county jail, where, he said, he was ordered to strip and lift his genitals, while an officer inspected him from an arm's length away.  After six days, he was transferred to another facility, where he was subjected to a similarly invasive inspection."
   "Strip-Search Injustice," Los Angeles Times editorial


"In one facility, this means "a complete disrobing, followed by an examination of the nude inmate ... by the supervising officer, which is then followed by a supervised shower with a delousing agent."  In the other facility, the booking process "required groups of 30 to 40 arrestees to enter a large shower room, simultaneously remove all of their clothing, place it in boxes and then shower.
    If you have ever driven over the speed limit in New Jersey, it could be you in that shower."
   "Court Ruling on Strip Searches Is Unjust" by Sherry Colb, CNN Opinion, www.cnn.com


It's a strange country we live in.  We tout freedom and excoriate other countries that do not share our superior conceptualizations of freedom, yet in practice our freedoms are deemed eminently worthy of sacrifice in the name of safety.  The case of Florence v. Board of Chosen Freeholders is a prime example of this sad fact.


How can we get our freedom back?   That is, presuming we ever really had "freedom" in the first place.  We can't.  It's gone forever (if it ever existed in anything beyond the conceptualization phase).  Admittedly, I'm pessimistic about such things.


In a nation of zero tolerance, as I've pointed out in my most previous blog posting, we've become simply a nation of intolerance.  Everyone is a suspect; everyone has relinquished his or her rights to any modicum of human privacy.  The Supreme Court Justices on the Kennedy-Scalia-Roberts-Thomas-Alito side know they're totally safe from having to pull up their scrotum to show some jerkoff redneck of a corrections officer, because no jerkoff redneck cop would ever risk his career to sneak a peek at Clarence Thomas's gonads, and Clarence, whenever he isn't flossing his teeth with one of Anita Hill's pubic hairs, can have a clear conscience as he goes about his day running errands for his wife, who will hunt a bitch down and demand an apology.


This is America, ladies and gentle-scrotal-lifters.  Get used to it.


Just fucking sad.

Here's something sad, too.  The TSA -- creepy, very, very creepy.  Like ... REALLY creepy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNO-AzPxS4U