Mineta's p.c. folly

The Washington Times ^ | July 23, 2004 | House Editorial

[xsysmgr]

The last thing this country needs is another terror attack from the sky. But that's apparently what the terrorists still have in mind, if recent reports are any indication. "Flight crews and air marshals say Middle Eastern men are staking out airports, probing security measures and conducting test runs aboard airplanes for a terrorist attack," Audrey Hudson wrote yesterday in this paper. This, along with a troubling account of 14 Middle Eastern men behaving strangely on a flight from Detroit to Los Angeles, written by Annie Jacobsen, a writer for Women's Wall Street, paints a picture of a troubled U.S. airline system constantly being tested by terrorists, enticingly vulnerable and hamstrung by nonsensical transportation-security regulations.

Just 10 days after September 11, in fact, Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta made it clear that airlines may not discriminate on the basis of race during security checks. In addition, Mrs. Jacobsen reports, "During the 9/11 hearings last April, 9/11 Commissioner John Lehman stated that '...it was the policy [before September 11] and I believe remains the policy today to fine airlines if they have more than two young Arab males in secondary questioning because that's discriminatory.' " This isn't a hollow regulation: In the three years following September 11, United Airlines, American Airlines and Continental Airlines settled discrimination cases with the Department of Transportation for a combined $3.5 million. When it comes to keeping a closer eye on men of Middle Eastern descent -- who have been almost exclusively responsible for attacks on airliners over the past two decades -- the airlines have their hands tied.

<snip>

...to ignore the fact that our enemies in this war are Islamist terrorists, and not elderly grandmothers or six-year-old boys, is a violation of government's ultimate responsibility to protect the basic right to life of innocent Americans.

[sarasota]

Why can't we have racial profiling? The next air attack may incite Americans to support this but why wait?

[ICX]

Norm Mineta is an incompetent, sniveling, self-important bureaucrat. Eff him.

[bboop]

Perhaps it's time for We the People to put pressure on Bush et al. to get Norm Mineta OUT. He is a foolish and dangerous man. And the directives -- "IF you profile two or more Muslim men, YOU get fined." Good GRIEF. It is a far cry from the Japanese Camps during WW2, which are beginning to look like a really great way to un-tangle Muslim young men from the/ our general population -- before it's too late.

[fieldmarshaldj]

Better to be dead than un-PC and "racist." (According to liberals)

[Carry_Okie]

That Bush hasn't fired this idiot Mineta blows me away. He still hasn't implemented arming the pilots.

[NonValueAdded]

Why don't the airlines have a "probable cause" exception to the anti-profiling regulation? Yes, there are plenty of law-abiding citizens of Arab descent who have as much of a right against profiling as any other ethnicity, Caucasian included. But common sense must also prevail and if there is a group of individuals that fits a pre-approved behavior profile, then it is imperative that a proper inspection is conducted, quota or not.

And why is this on the airlines, anyway? Didn't TSA take over that responsibility so that we would have "high paid government employees" add their mark of "professionalism"?

[Carry_Okie]

Very specifically, by fining airlines, especially those that fly out of Detroit, for performing secondary inspections on more that 2 ME males, when Detroit has such a large ME derived population is beyond ridiculous.

Mineta was absolutely the wrong person for that job. Bush put him there as a gesture of "bipartisanship" and, if we have another terrorist attack from the air, he may yet come to regret it.

[Sender]

I think the Israelis have their passenger screening priorities figured out much more sensibly than we do. Here we are, we can't profile likely suspects, and what do we care most about? Take their nail clippers. That comb looks pointy to me.

OTOH the Israelis not only profile, but when they have a passenger they have questions about, they interview them by someone with psychological training. They are not restrained against asking un-PC questions such as 'how do you feel about Jews?' or whatever it takes to make a terrorist sweat and give himself away.

I realize the volume of US passenger traffic would make this approach difficult, but hey, it's not what you have in your carryon bag that makes you dangerous, it's what you have in your head.

[expatpat]

You can't fight a purely defensive war and win. If we allow the terrorissts to get nukes from rogue states, it is impossible to stop EVERY attempt to blow up one of our cities. "The best defense is a good offense" is a long-valued truism.

[Malesherbes]

I hate the thought, but it is going to take another major explosion to wake this country up - and get the Mineta's out of office. By and large we are still operating with a politically correct 9-10 mentality in a 9-11 world.

[ZULU]

Mineta should be fired.

I think we can find several thousand equally qualifed Japanese Americans who are not total idiots, any one of which can replace him.

[monkeyman81]

I was reading the commission's report. It said that some of the hijackers were flagged by CAPPS (computer assisted passenger profiling system) but were not given further scrutiny. I wonder why not. Were the security people afraid of being accused of racial profiling?

[expatpat]

You have to play offense and defense -- neither alone will win.

[savedbygrace]

I've posted this many times, but here goes again:

Random checks (searches) are, by definition, not reasonable. In other words, the people being checked are not being checked because of a declarable reason, but rather, because of a random decision to check (search) them.

Therefore, random checks are a violation of the 4th Amendment, which requires first and foremost that any search be reasonable.

John, am I off-base here?

[BartMan1]

As the first Israeli prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, said, "[W]hile it is good that there be a world full of peace, fraternity, justice and honesty, it is even more important that we be in it."

Ben-Gurion's words have even more urgency today.

Yeah, this is good....

[MississippiMan]

As I said in another thread, if Bush allows this nonsense to continue, and we get hit again as a result, he WILL have American blood on his hands. Mineta may be the idiot on point, but the buck stops with the president. Allowing it to continue is indefensible.

MM