About a week ago, John Tyner went through security at about 6 AM at the San Diego International Airport. The rest has become a national sensation, with “don’t touch my junk” t-shirts already available for sale.

In short, the TSA has started using new screening machines that leave little or nothing to the imagination, with the traveler’s alternative being a pat down that many consider overly intrusive. It’s getting the attention of many, including members of Congress.

Ron Paul (R-TX) has even introduced the “American Traveler Dignity Act":

Meanwhile TSA officials and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Incompetano are not backing away from the procedures, except that Janet wasn’t so sure when asked whether a Muslim woman in a hijab would be subjected to the same scrutiny as, for example, this three year old girl:

The tech web site Gizmodo has released a video containing 100 images from one of these scanners – images which were improperly collected and kept by US marshalls at a federal court house in Florida. Although it’s not directly an airport problem, it points out something that will probably happen at an airport within days or weeks, if it hasn’t happened already.

Airline pilots are reacting negatively to the TSA scans, including pilot-hero “Sully” Sullenberger who called the scans a “waste of limited resources.”

But perhaps the best news of the week as it relates to this issue is that Orlando, Florida’s Sanford International Airport is kicking TSA out of the airport to replace them with cheaper, better private contractors.

In our first hour, we’ll talk about junk-gate with Scott Ott, author of “Laughing at Obama, Volume 1” and co-host of PJTV’s “Trifecta“. Scott also writes the hilarious Scrappleface blog.

In our second hour, we’ll continue the conversation (perhaps in a more serious way) with Jay Ambrose, former Editor of the Rocky Mountain News and director of editorial policy for Scripps-Howard Newspapers.

We’ll also get Jay’s take on a little-noticed (outside of the few people who focus on such issues) FDA panel vote about an expensive prostate cancer drug and its implications for government policy. The issue raises important questions about whether government can or should make decisions which implicitly put a value on a human life, but also about whether avoiding such decisions leads to anything more than huge transfers of wealth from the healthy to the dying. You can read more about the drug – called Provenge, the panel vote, and my initial reaction to the story HERE.

For our third hour, while I will have material prepared, I’m going to try something new. During the first two hours of the show, I’m going to ask you, our listeners, to suggest a topic you’d like to hear discussed. And, if I’m capable of doing so intelligently, we’ll try to tackle one or two of those. It’ll be something like an “open line” day, but you can make your suggestions by phone, e-mail, instant message, or carrier pigeon. (Actually, the windows in the studio don’t open so carrier pigeon is no good unless he can take out the little message and hold it up to the window so I can read it.)

As with last week, at some point during the show, I’ll ask a question about some past person or event. The first person to call in with the right answer (only calls, not IM or e-mail) will win a copy of Fredric Bastiat’s “The Law’, page for page the most effective attack on socialism (and therefore “Progressivism") ever written.

Please join me by listening to (and calling in to) this week’s Backbone Radio program from 5 PM to 8 PM on 710 AM KNUS in Denver and 1460 AM KZNT in Colorado Springs.

If you’re not in range of the radio waves, you should be able to listen to the show online by clicking HERE.

I hope you’ll actively participate in the conversation with me: Call the studio at 303 696 1971, e-mail me at rossputin(at)rossputin.com, or instant message from my site at http://rossputin.com or through AOL Instant messenger to screen name Rossputin.