[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.

[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"?

[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.

[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?

[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?

[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

[mtbopfuyn]

Anyone know the name of the bozo on Fox and Friends this morning Edie was interviewing about the Commission's report? She specifically questioned him about the rule of only searching 2 Arabs per flight. He claimed he wasn't aware of any such thing and acted as if it's not true.