TSA Gropers Draw Tea Party Wrath; Unionizing Vote Next

Add "gate rape" to the bill of indictment that tea party activists are pressing against the Obama administration.

Florida TEA (Taxed Enough Already) Party Chairman Peg Dunmire says the TSA's newest security measures violate the Fourth Amendment and will stoke anti-government sentiment heading into the 2012 election.

"This is not making us any safer, it is an illusion," Dunmire said of the full-body scans and enhanced pat-downs that rolled out this month at U.S. airports.

"They need to be looking at people who have suspicious travel arrangements. The 85-year-old grandmother in a wheelchair is not a likely candidate," she told Central Florida radio station WDBO.

While the TEA Party has been derided as "fake tea" by Florida's Republican establishment and unaffiliated tea partiers around the state, Dunmire's group has allies on the TSA issue.

Tea Party Nation founder Justin Phillips says TSA's aggressive, hands-on tactics overreach on two levels.

"I am appalled by them. First is the radiation hazard which the regime does not even address. Second, I dont want people staring at me without clothes or my wife or my teenaged daughter or my grade school sons," Phillips said.

Tea groups will likely get more political ammunition next year if, as expected, 50,000 TSA personnel vote to unionize. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has said she supports collective bargaining rights for TSA workers.