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January 06, 2010 Airport Security Measures Draw Accusations of 'Profiling' The Obama administration's decision to crank up airport security for passengers traveling from 14 nations has triggered a backlash of complaints from Muslim and privacy groups who say the president's response to terror threats amounts to little more than racial profiling. The Obama administration's decision to crank up airport security for passengers traveling to the U.S. from 14 nations has triggered a backlash of complaints from Muslim and privacy groups who say President Obama's response to terror threats amounts to little more than racial profiling. But defenders of the policy...

As hands are wrung in the aftermath of the near-tragedy on a Northwest Airlines flight approaching Detroit, a conversation from London's Heathrow Airport in 1986 comes to mind. It consisted of an El Al security agent quizzing one Ann-Marie Doreen Murphy, a 32-year-old recent arrival in London from Sallynoggin, Ireland. While working as a chambermaid at the Hilton Hotel on Park Lane, Murphy met Nizar al-Hindawi, a far-leftist Palestinian who impregnated her. After instructing her to "get rid of the thing," he abruptly changed his tune and insisted on immediate marriage in "the Holy Land." He also insisted on their...

Former Reagan Justice Department official David Rivkin appeared live on MSNBC’s “Hardball with Chris Matthews” to discuss increased airport profiling measures in the wake of the Christmas Day attempted terrorist bombing of Flight 253 to Detroit. “It’s a reasonable way to go …. with profiling, let’s leave aside political correctness,” Rivkin told host Chris Matthews. “It’s a way of marshaling scarce resources to manage a large threat.” The Transportation Security Administration has increased inbound flight screening measures in 14 foreign countries of origin including: Afghanistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Cuba, Libya, Pakistan and Nigeria. Rivkin noted that the real question was...

Liberals use three main arguments as to why we should not use profiling to stop terrorism. One, they raise the spectres of Timothy McVeigh, the Unabomber and others as examples that spending more time monitoring and checking out those who are of Semitic descent or from the Middle East or those whose passports show that they are from terrorist hotspots, and less time monitoring or harrasing little old ladies, will not work. They use the exception to the rule (McVeigh, the unabomber and others) to try and rule out using profiling. This is faulty reasoning to the core, given that...

The Northwest Flight 253 bombing attempt has once again reignited the debate over using profiling as a security technique. Many have pointed out over the years that ethnic profiling could have stopped the attacks of September 11. And it probably could have. But profiling alone is not the solution. First of all let's concede that America's intelligence capabilities are virtually useless. Shoe bomber Richard Reid was spotted by the Israelis. British intelligence knew about Umar. Nidal Malik Hasan did everything but walk around within the military establishment carrying a sign, "I Will Kill You All". And had he even actually...

This is a purely unscientific poll designed strictly for fun and to allow our readers to sound off on current news and political events.

Sounds like a Bush/Cheney rerun. The Obama Administration’s Transportation Safety Adninistration is now supporting racial profiling and selective racial discrimination and supports the use of …. GET READY… “enhanced screening techniques” Heck if enhanced screening techniques work maybe they should try enhanced interrogation too.

LONDON — American authorities announced that as of Monday, anyone traveling from or through nations regarded as state sponsors of terrorism — as well as "other countries of interest" — will be required to go through enhanced screening techniques before boarding flights.

Several years ago, in what seems to be a previous life, I worked for a subsidiary of TWA at Frankfurt Internation Airport in Germany. This was during the Balkan War timeframe and just a few short years after the Lockerbie Attack. This subsidiary provided Security Screening services to TWA as well as to United Airlines. Some of you may recall a time when, in front of every checkin counter, some person was stationed and asked a bunch of "dumb" questions (i.e. Did you pack these bags yourself?) - that was my a part of my job. The OTHER part of...

Congratulations on an outstanding job, Osama. You masterfully pulled the strings, and the most powerful nation in the world jumped. You caused turmoil in major airports around the world on the busiest travel day of the year, cancelling and delaying thousands of flights. Now we discover that there is a new place to hide explosives as we scurry around to devise solutions. Passengers go through a pre... Passengers go through a pre-flight security screening at Ben-Gurion Airport. Photo: Ariel Jerozolimski [file] Creating havoc at airports will divert our attention from your real targets. Perhaps our fragile electricity grid? Or our...

Andy, you're right to call out the President for taking refuge in discredited cliches about "crushing poverty" as a "root cause" of terrorism: Young Mr Abdulmuttalab lived in a London flat worth £2.5 million - ie, four million bucks. Still, it's good to know the President has abandoned his laughable assurances that the Pantybomber was an "isolated extremist". After all, when the leader of the global hyperpower says things that any reasonably informed person at home and abroad knows are complete twaddle, he makes his country look stupid to the world. But I think we're still missing the larger point...

A lunatic tries to blow up an airplane, so now my 2-year-old daughter can't sleep on her pillow. If this is how we respond as a nation to terror threats, then maybe the terrorists really are winning. We all know that we have to take off our shoes at security because some other lunatic tried to blow up his shoes. These rules, created in response to the latest terror plots, inconvenience us all and waste time and money as more and more resources are allotted to enforcing them. But we tolerate it because it's a small price to pay for...

Why body-scan a family jetting to Disneyland? Once again the vulnerability of air travel to terrorism has been exposed. The existing measures deployed for passenger security at airport security points didn’t stop the Christmas Day airline bomb plot suspect who had explosives sewn into his underwear. The archway metal detector can, after all, only detect metal. Unsurprisingly, the knee-jerk reaction of many governments is to order more full-body scanners. They can, in the hands of expert operators, identify a host of substances and items concealed beneath clothing. But it would be a grave error to use this technology to screen...

Let’s give these terrorist swine who want to blow themselves up on our airplanes a clear choice of which lines they should fly and which they should avoid. The best way to do this is for American airlines to publicly announce they will now profile their passengers at will. The wording could be: “In order to do everything possible to insure the safety of our passengers and crews, (name) Airline reserves the right to profile and reject anyone attempting to fly with us who appears to be dangerous. We are fully prepared to defend our actions against all legal challenges...

I don’t want to be profiled at the airport. It has happened before, and I hate it. Volunteering for more isn’t what I feel like doing right now, but our airport security system is so half-baked and dysfunctional it may as well not even exist, and flying is about to become more miserable anyway. So rather than doubling down on grandma and micromanaging everyone on the plane, we might want to pay as much attention to people as to their luggage, especially military-aged males who make unusual and suspicious-looking travel arrangements. That’s what the Israelis do, and that’s why security...

CATHOLIC NUN SEARCHED BY MUSLIM TSA AGENT. GO FIGURE! Since 9/11, traveling by plane is a nightmare. It is amazing how Americans have allowed themselves to be humiliated, strip searched, wanded, puffed, etc. so the politically correct Homeland Security can show they’re not racist by profiling the very people who should be profiled…Muslims! What has happened to common sense? Have we become so docile we have lost all of our spirit? Have we lost our sanity? We have all witnessed the TSA goons at airports searching and wanding American grandmothers in wheel chairs. It’s ridiculous! We’ve all had fingernail clippers...

Four days after Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab allegedly failed to blow up a Northwest Airlines jet from Amsterdam to Detroit, government officials, security experts and members of the public are still trying to figure out what went wrong and how air travel security can be improved. After the botched attack, at least one member of Congress, Peter King, R-N.Y., has suggested that profiling by religion or race could improve security. In an interview on Fox News, King said, "The fact is, while the overwhelming majority of Muslims are outstanding people, on the other hand, 100 percent of the Islamic terrorists are...

“We’re still focusing on keeping prohibited items off planes, but that calculus is working against us,� says Andrew Thomas, an aviation security expert at the University of Akron in Ohio. “The terrorists are constantly developing more sophisticated attacks. Meanwhile, the range of explosive devices that terrorists are developing is outstripping the ability of screening systems to catch them. Last August, an alleged suicide bomber who had explosives implanted in his body injured Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Nayef. Even controversial full body scans don’t pick up such hidden devices, Mr. Thomas says. New profiling methods Instead, Thomas says authorities should focus...

If, God Forbid, we are not victorious in this global war against Islamist terrorism, it will not be because we lost, it will be because we committed suicide, death by political correctness. Of course it is important to make sure to be fair and not to target a particular group, but it is also important to realize that WE did not single out Muslims in this war, the Islamist Terrorists did. The overwhelming majority of Muslims are good decent people, but the overwhelming majority of terrorists that have attacked the United States and her allies are Islamists, a radical theology...

Here is video of Ann Coulter and Matthew Littman (former Obama campaign advisor) debating whether political correctness has endangered our country and whether we should be profiling or not. (Video)Littman said that it makes him "nervous" to have a separate line for "one group of people" and said that he would like to see more "full body searches" instead. Ann Coulter said that liberals are "willing to violate the civil liberties of two million Americans a day to not upset Muslims" instead of just "asking a guy from Nigeria to go through an extra check, when his own father warned...

The response to the recent attempt to blow up the Northwest Airlines flight is what I have seen referred to as "security theatre". Steps are taken to make everyone feel nice, warm, cuddly and safe. The actions don't involve any kind of profiling, and thus are politically correct. The actions also involve huge amounts of cost and inconvenience, and accomplish nothing.

100% of the terrorists who have attacked our airlines have been young, Arab, Muslim and/or male. Yet we insist on searching little old white ladies from Nebraska. Was Bobby Kennedy being a racist when he targeted only white males to end Klan violence? Of course not. White males were generally the only ones attacking people. Bomb-sniffing dogs are trained to identify the chemicals Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab carried on board that plane. If we would have been giving extra scrutiny to those who fit the profile, we would never have had to rely on some random passenger to prevent a terrorist...

VS. WHO: Yeffet Isaac, Former Director of El-Al Airlines Security -VS.- Ibrahim Hooper Executive Director of C.A.I.R.WHAT: A Well Overdue DEBATEWHEN: As Soon As PossibleWHERE: LIVE NATIONWIDE on American TV, CNN, FOX, Major Networks, Radio Stations, NPR, etc., With Studio Audience Able to Ask QuestionsWHY: America dodged a major bullet on Christmas Day in Detroit. Reports are that additional terrorist acts involving US airliners are probably on the way. El-Al has a clean record of never being attacked by Islamist Extremists. C.A.I.R. has stated that the US should not, at all costs, racially and religiously profile passengers in the...

CAIR: Don't racial profile after airline incidents December 27, 2009 23:04 EST SNIPPET: "WASHINGTON (AP) -- A Muslim advocacy group is urging passengers, crews and security personnel to avoid ethnic and religious "profiling" in the wake of the attempted bombing of a Northwest Airlines flight in Detroit on Christmas Day. In a statement, Ibrahim Hooper of the Washington, D.C.-based Council on American-Islamic Relations says, "While everyone supports robust airline security measures, racial and religious profiling are in fact counterproductive and can lead to a climate of insecurity and fear.""

Pallin also recognized the political landmine into which she stepped when using the word “Profiling” . She went on to say, “Because I used that word ‘profile’ I’m going to get clobbered tomorrow morning. Liberals, their heads are just gonna be spinnin’. They’re gonna say ‘She is radical. She is extreme’. But I say profiling in the context of doing whatever we can to save innocent American lives…I’m all for it.”

"Going postal" is a piquant American phrase that describes the phenomenon of violent rage in which a worker--archetypically a postal worker--"snaps" and guns down his colleagues. As the enormity of the actions of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan sinks in, we must ask whether we are confronting a new phenomenon of violent rage, one we might dub--disconcertingly--"Going Muslim." This phrase would describe the turn of events where a seemingly integrated Muslim-American--a friendly donut vendor in New York, say, or an officer in the U.S. Army at Fort Hood--discards his apparent integration into American society and elects to vindicate his religion in...

It started as a simple term project for an MIT class on ethics and law on the electronic frontier. Two students partnered up to take on the latest Internet fad: the online social networks that were exploding into the mainstream. With people signing up in droves to reconnect with classmates and old crushes from high school, and even becoming online “friends” with their family members, the two wondered what the online masses were unknowingly telling the world about themselves. The pair weren’t interested in the embarrassing photos or overripe profiles that attract so much consternation from parents and potential employers....

Harshad Desai has endured racial slurs and harassment since moving to Panguitch in 1992, so a ruling that he be allowed to substitute teach in Garfield public schools comes as long overdue vindication. But the 58-year-old native of India, a U.S. citizen, doesn't hold a grudge. He says he just wants a shot at teaching, to see if it's something he is good at and likes. Cheryl D. Luke, an administrative law judge for the Utah Labor Commission, determined that Garfield School District officials engaged in racial profiling and prejudice when in 2001, they rejected Desai for a substitute teaching...

A federal warning to beware of campers in national forests who eat tortillas, drink Tecate beer and play Spanish music because they could be armed marijuana growers is racial profiling, an advocate for Hispanic rights said Friday. The warnings were issued Wednesday by the U.S. Forest Service, which is investigating how much marijuana is being illegally cultivated in Colorado's national forests following the recent discovery of more than 14,000 plants in Pike National Forest. "That's discriminatory, and it puts Hispanic campers in danger," said Polly Baca, co-chairwoman of the Colorado Latino Forum. A spokesman for the U.S. Forest Service had...

ARLINGTON, Va. — Under fire following revelations that a military command in Afghanistan is compiling profiles of reporters covering U.S. military operations, Pentagon officials acknowledged Thursday that they were reviewing the practice even as they maintained that they were not making use of “positive,” “negative” and “neutral” grades assigned to reporters’ work by a Pentagon contractor. “For me, a tool like this serves no purpose and it doesn’t serve me with any value,” Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman told reporters as some of the affected war correspondents began demanding to see their secret military profiles. Whitman told Pentagon reporters that he...

According to MSNBC, LA Weekly, the San Francisco Chronicle and the Washington Post, the mystery artist who created the sensational Obama Joker image was a closet hood-wearing Darth Cheney-like Klansman. How about a young Palestinian-American Kucinich fan?

The complaints against Broward County Deputy Jonathan Bleiweiss began more than a year before he was arrested on sexual assault charges. An Oakland Park priest sent an email to the mayor, city commissioners and sheriff officials, informing them of a deputy that was abusing the homeless people who attended his church’s soup kitchen. Father Bob Daudill had even posted a flier inside the All Saints Catholic Mission soup kitchen with Bleiweiss’ picture on it, warning the homeless to avoid that deputy, according to The Miami Herald. Daudill sent his email in June 2008. Apparently nothing was done about it. Not...

Rock legend Bob Dylan was treated like a complete unknown by police in a New Jersey shore community when a resident called to report someone wandering around the neighborhood. The officers asked Dylan for identification. The singer of such classics as "Like a Rolling Stone" and "Blowin' in the Wind" said that he didn't have any ID with him, that he was just walking around looking at houses to pass some time before that night's show. The officers asked Dylan, 68, to accompany them back to the Ocean Place Resort and Spa, where the performers were staying. Once there, tour...

Exactly one week after the highly-publicized arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates stirred a national discussion on race relations, legendary singer-songwriter Bob Dylan was detained by police officers in a "low-income, predominantly minority neighborhood" in Long Branch, New Jersey. Makes one wonder why it took so long for this to get reported, and if news outlets that were convinced Gates's arrest was racially motivated will see the delicious irony in a white rock star being questioned by police just because he was "wandering around the neighborhood." The Associated Press sure didn't (h/t Clarence Page): Rock legend Bob Dylan was...

When Barack Obama said that the Henry Louis Gates affair was a teachable moment, he spoke truly. But the key is ensuring that the right things are taught and the right people learn. Unfortunately, this is unlikely to happen. There is no need to rehash the events of July 16 chapter and verse. We all know about how the Harvard professor flew into a rage of racial accusations and haughty posturing after Sergeant James Crowley appeared at his Cambridge home to investigate a report of a possible break-in. We've heard that Gates called Crowley a "racist" and said he was...

Rock legend Bob Dylan was treated like a complete unknown by police in a New Jersey shore community when a resident called to report someone wandering around the neighborhood. Dylan was in Long Branch, about a two-hour drive south of New York City, on July 23 as part of a tour with Willie Nelson and John Mellencamp that was to play at a baseball stadium in nearby Lakewood. A 24-year-old police officer apparently was unaware of who Dylan is and asked him for identification, Long Branch business administrator Howard Woolley said Friday. "I don't think she was familiar with his...

<p>BLACK intellectuals just don’t get it. They refuse to understand why there is widespread racial profiling and why they and people they know often are its victims. Black intellectuals simply refuse to acknowledge that there is a very obvious connection between themselves and the lawless black underclass. In a recent essay in The New York Times, Brent Staples, a member of the newspaper’s editorial board, wrote, “The experience of being mistaken for a criminal is almost a rite of passage for African-American men. Security guards shadow us in stores. Troopers pull us over for the crime of ‘driving while black.’ Nighttime pedestrians cower by us on the streets.” In expressing his disgust that the Harvard professor-Cambridge cop confrontation has not been seen generally as a flagrant instance of racial profiling, Times columnist Bob Herbert urges black people “to rant and to rave, to demonstrate and to lobby, to march and confront and to sue and generally do whatever is necessary to stop a continuing and deeply racist criminal justice outrage.” The Harvard professor — Henry Louis Gates Jr. — and Staples and Herbert think the unfair treatment of blacks by the police is 100 percent the fault of white people. In the view of Staples, white people need to exorcise their “poisonous misconceptions.” But, for racial profiling to go away, blacks, especially black intellectuals, need to remove their blinders. They need to see what whites see. They need to see and acknowledge the criminal lifestyle that is pervasive in the black underclass....</p>

Gay Cop Profiled Illegal Aliens for Molestation

INSTITUTE W.Va.-- The state convention of the West Virginia NAACP is underway in Kanawha County. On the second day of the event was a series of forums on a variety of civil rights issues, including racial profiling. A recent study commissioned by the West Virginia Legislature showed more minority drivers are stopped by police than white drivers. "It's very hurtful. It's very judgemental, judging people by their color or what they're driving or what they look like. It's unfair," said Constance Smith of Martinsburg. Smith is one of 60 delegates attending the NAACP State Convention at West Virginia State University....

I had an epiphany, last weekend, after receiving a chain e-mail from a valley friend. This e-mail, titled “Black Robbers,” told about a woman who had won a bucket of quarters playing the slots in Las Vegas, but was afraid to board her hotel elevator when she noticed the two black men already aboard. As so many of these e-mails do, this one encapsulated a morality tale: Fearful white woman — prisoner of her inbred prejudices — makes bigoted assumptions about African-American males and is humiliated when proved wrong. Adding to the piquancy of the tale is the inevitable, “rest...

"I'm retired now, but in my day we knew who to look for to make arrests. And they were white people." I'm retired now after a wonderful career with the New York City Police Department, and I have a confession to make. I used a person's race to initiate investigations and make subsequent arrests. In fact, according to the definition bandied about by those on the left who have no idea what they are talking about nor a clue when it comes to police work, I was - yes - a racial profiler. A little background. I was a detective,...

Here is video of Laura Ingraham last night talking with Ann Coulter about "racial profiling" and the Henry Louis Gates Jr. arrest controversy. Coulter believes most accusations of racial profiling are "a hoax," and she talks through many of those cases in the video. Ingraham also asked Ann about her faceoff with the Rev. Al Sharpton on Larry King Live this week. . . . . . . . .(Watch Video)

NEW YORK (CNN) -- Many Latinos say they know how Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates felt during a recent arrest because they believe police often racially profile Hispanics, too. Gates, a noted African-American scholar, has said he was arrested at his home in large part because of his race. Police say he became disorderly when asked for identification after a report of a possible break-in. "Professor Gates' case resonates with us because he is a prominent academic at a very prominent institution, but it is a reality that occurs on these streets every day," said Vicente Alba-Panama of the...

Ann Coulter discusses racial profiling and the Gates arrest.

Noted magical race healer doesn’t bother to check if his friend, Professor Gates, who needs a cane to walk, can make it down the steps okay.

Race Relations: Two people acted responsibly in Gatesgate and did what they were supposed to do. Only one of them got invited to the White House to have a beer with the president and the professor.We don't know whether Lucia Whalen is a connoisseur of fine brews. We do know she wasn't invited to have one with President Obama, professor Henry Louis Gates and Sgt. James Crowley of the Cambridge, Mass., police department. She should have been. The rabid left would say Whalen "acted stupidly" in reporting a possible crime in progress. Some are in fact saying it. The facts...

Sometimes a beer is just a beer—except in politics, where beer may signify any old thing we want it to. It is the most abused of all the spirits. Since the early '70s, the typical voter has often been referred to as Joe Six-Pack. Beer made the cover of Newsweek magazine as part of a discussion of whether candidate Barack Obama (represented by a leaf of arugula) could connect with the common man (represented by a frosty mug). This was an extension of the political sorting technique of describing Democratic candidates who appeal to upscale voters as "wine track" candidates...

It occurs to me, as the MSM is cooing and fawning over the Beer Summit, that it wouldn't take many freepers buying a bottle or a sixpack to clear a few shelves in convenience stores and send the sales up. For those of us who imbibe, maybe switch brands for a few days? And stay away from that Red Stripe stuff--the beer of Harvard snobs and racial profilers.

WASHINGTON (AP) - Attorney General Eric Holder says he was racially profiled years ago. The nation's first black attorney general, Holder tells ABC News that, as a college student, he was stopped by an officer while driving and told to open his trunk for a search. The nation's top law enforcement officer was asked about racial profiling in light of the debate over the arrest earlier this month of black Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. at his home by a white officer.

It must be great to be a Harvard professor with a bad attitude and be friend of the President. You might get a cool job in Washington D.C. You can also pop off to a cop and then expect the most powerful community organizer in the world to get your back at his next press conference. If you happen to be an African-American Harvard professor with a bad attitude, you can also scream racism and no one left of John McCain will doubt you’re wrong.