Advocacy groups and some legal experts told Congress on Wednesday that it was unreasonable for federal officials to search the laptops of United States citizens when they re-enter the country from traveling abroad.

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    The federal government says the searches are necessary for national security and for legal action against people who bring illegal material into the country.

    “If you asked most Americans whether the government has the right to look through their luggage for contraband when they are returning from an overseas trip, they would tell you ‘yes, the government has that right,’ ” Senator Russ Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin, said Wednesday at the hearing of a Senate Judiciary subcommittee.

    “But,” Mr. Feingold continued, “if you asked them whether the government has a right to open their laptops, read their documents and e-mails, look at their photographs and examine the Web sites they have visited, all without any suspicion of wrongdoing, I think those same Americans would say that the government absolutely has no right to do that.”

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    This is what happens when old men, like John McCain, frankly, try to make important decisions about new technology. They don't understand it, so they screw up. A search of a laptop computer, or a cell phone, is not a search of your luggage. It's a search of luggage that happens to contain the equivalent of a tape recording of every phone conversation you've had in the past ten years. Luggage that contains details of your sex life, including possible a recorded history of it. Luggage that includes your medical history. Nude photos of your spouse, or yourself. Your personal diary. A computer is not the same thing as an electric razor or a radio. It's an incredibly intimate look into the life of the bearer, and old men who know nothing about the brave new world of technology shouldn't be in the position of deciding how personal a computer really is (or isn't).

    This November, for the first time, McCain's name will appear on a national ballot. While Arizona residents know a lot about McCain's political history, the nation, as a whole, knows relatively little. His national image is largely a fantasy created by his public relations machine. It is time now that the nation learns the facts about McCain. What better place to begin than in his home state with his fellow Republicans?

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    Bob Haney, the Republican state committee chairman in Arizona's 11th District, has described the situation to Max Blumenthal this way:

        "People would be calling in to [state committee] headquarters every week, absolutely enraged, threatening to leave the party because of some comments McCain made," Haney told me. "The guy has no core, his only principle is winning the presidency. He likes to call his campaign the 'straight talk express.' Well, down here we call it the 'forked tongue express.'"