What a riot. Seems to me others are doing the name calling. And yes I will go on being an independent thinker instead of drinking from the KoolAid cup. I never said I didn't respect Republicans, I did however suggest I had very little respect for RINOS, and a whole lot for Conservatives. And as far as substance goes, I said quite a bit, just nothing that suited your idea of what I should say.
I have been consistent in voicing my opinion of opposing Norman Mineta as Secretary of Transportation. I've been a FReeper since 1998, I love and am so grateful Pres. Bush is our President, and am not, as other FReepers will attest, prone to posting inflammatory information.
I heard this news as I was preparing to leave for an appointment. I admit it made me very angry, and I exploded and just had a few seconds to post. I may have erupted in print, but my solitary exclamations and bitter disappointment were real and based on my observations as someone who's flown quite a bit in the U.S. and Canada in the last 3 years, as well as monitoring aviation security issues and updates.
Mr. Maneta may have done some wonderful and meaningful things about which we haven't seen reported, but it's like the boyfriend who's a pretty good guy, but one day he hurts you in a very objectionable and offensive manner. All those other good things are erased because his imprudent choice is so unacceptable. Hence, the relationship is forever colored with distrust and skepticism, maybe finished, because he's revealed he has a serious character flaw.
I'm very upset that he is remaining in his post, based on MY experiences and research. In a decisive election, with abundant political capital, and, in this case, the documented knowledge professed by most respected national security and intelligence analysts that we will surely be struck again by evil Islamofascists, shouldn't the issue be: who is the BEST person there is for this critical cabinet position?
If anyone wants to describe a scenario under which Norman Mineta could be described as someone who has proven he is the best person possible for this position at this time, I would respectfully entertain their point of view.
I'm pretty stunned at the lengths to which civility deteriorated on this thread .. the shrillness, name-calling .. c'mon, folks. Excluding the interlopers, we're a pretty reasoned bunch and allowed our opinions. Seeing strongly felt opinions in print doesn't transmit well .. you know that .. print is so cold. The tit-for-tat posts challenging or demeaning each other get nowhere. Those of us FReepers who disagree with this appointment aren't being anti-Bush, anymore than respected conservatives like Peggy Noonan, Michelle Malkin, Rich Lowry or Ann Coulter are anti-Bush. They hold a strong, and I believe, sensible opinion about this issue. I'm solidly with them. Perhaps those who fly regularly are a lot more sensitive to this issue than those who don't, but sensitivity or not, it's a critial area of concern for us all.
We're talking about protecting our country's aviation security .. and how best to insure safety at airports and in flight for obvious reasons.
For God's sake, we have a documented, stated enemy. They were already legally permitted into this country, given the privilege of flying in our homeland and killed thousands. We know who they are, we know they like to repeat scenarios, we know they are determined, and the reason we know is because they keep terrorizing, plotting and threatening us with what they are going to do to destroy us.
The documentation exists that demonstrates Mineta's prioritization of concern for offending ethnic sensibilities over screening people of concern, fining airlines who were suffering financially after 9/11 millions of dollars for "profiling," obstructing guns for trained commercial airline pilots, inconsistent airport security screening policies, the outrageous amount of weaponry still being missed in airport screening, etc. Disregarding all the rest, just the inability of airport screeners to profile when there is just concern makes him unacceptable to me, and in this case political correctness can be fatal. I just can't conceive that Pres. Bush is promoting these policies .. he's a delegator.
At this point, I don't care why .. it's obvious what needs to be done, and it's not happened that I've seen or read. If it is, I'd sure like to know about it.
Our kids are out there in hell ... in Afghanistan and Iraq and elsewhere, giving their blood and sacrificing their lives for us, for our safety and perhaps very survival. Every terrorist they kill is one less we have to worry will blend in here to plot evil. In contrast to that level of committment, duty and sacrifice expended to protect our homeland, it is an obscenity to me that protecting ethnic sensibilities at airports is even given a second's consideration. We're going to risk offending 3 out of a group of 5 in an airport rather than putting security first ?? You know any soldiers who wouldn't screen someone with cause who's a particular ethnic origin in this war on terror for fear of offending them or compromising their civil rights?
Obviously, we know we have to balance security with our civil liberties, as Americans. Thank God, our security has finally been bolstered with the Patriot Act. We don't want to live in a police state or see people abused or harrassed without cause, but don't we and those in positions of critical importance have the obligation to be the best soldiers we can be here?
By the same token, those of us who are dead set against any amnesty program or the outright gift of American driver's licenses for illegal immigrants don't hold this opinion to be racist or hostile to foreigners .. we simply want the highest level of security and protection humanly possible for America, as well as fair and legal immigration policies.
Heritage Foundation has a credible reputation for integrity and factual analysis. Here are a couple of excerpts from testimony given by their Senior Legal Research Fellow for Legal and Judicial Studies, Paul Rosenzweig in March of 2004, about Anti-Terrorism Efforts, Civil Liberty and Civil Rights
"....Racial or National Origin Profiling
– Racial profiling poses a deeply difficult and intractable problem. As a society we reject general reliance on immutable characteristics such as race or gender. On the other hand the problems of terrorism pose new and greater dangers. Whenever I teach this aspect of police conduct to my law students, I always emphasize that the proper way to define the “reasonableness” of law enforcement activity is to assess three separate values – the degree of intrusion occasioned by the activity; the harm being averted; and the “closeness of the fit” between the scope of activity in question and the harm being averted.
Looked at through this prism of analysis, it is easy to see why most racial profiling is wisely rejected. Typically, the harm being averted is a general common law crime and the “fit” is poor, at best and often non-existent. Profiling African-Americans for driving on certain roadways fits in this category. If it exists, it is unjustifiable and unconstitutional.
But this also suggests that, in very limited circumstances, the balance might change when the object of our activity is to prevent terrorism, and the use of national origin data and characteristics is much more narrowly applied. Let me begin with some theoretical points that are broadly applicable:
The danger to America posed by terrorists arises from the new and unique nature of potential acts of war. Virtually every terrorism expert in and out of government believes there is a significant risk of another attack. Unlike during the Cold War, the threat of such an attack is asymmetric.
In the Cold War era, U.S. analysts assessed Soviet capabilities, thinking that their limitations bounded the nature of the threat the Soviets posed. Because of the terrorists’ skillful use of low-tech capabilities (e.g. box cutters) their capacity for harm is essentially limitless.
The United States therefore faces the far more difficult task of discerning their intentions. Where the Soviets created “things” that could be observed, the terrorists create only transactions that can be sifted from the noise of everyday activity only with great difficulty. It is a problem of unprecedented scope, and one whose solution is imperative if American lives are to be saved.
As should be clear from the outline of the scope of the problem, the suppression of terrorism will not be accomplished by military means alone. Rather, effective law enforcement and/or intelligence gathering activity are the key to avoiding new terrorist acts. Recent history supports this conclusion.[6] In fact, police have arrested more terrorists than military operations have captured or killed. Police in more than 100 countries have arrested more than 3000 Al Qaeda linked suspects,[7] while the military captured some 650 enemy combatants.[8] Equally important, it is policing of a different form – preventative rather than reactive, since there is less value in punishing terrorists after the fact when, in some instances, they are willing to perish in the attack.
The foregoing understanding of the nature of the threat from terrorism helps to explain why the traditional law enforcement paradigm needs to be modified (or, in some instances, discarded) in the context of terrorism investigations. The traditional law enforcement model is highly protective of civil liberty in preference to physical security.
All lawyers have heard one or another form of the maxim that “it is better that 10 guilty go free than that 1 innocent be mistakenly punished.”[9] This embodies a fundamentally moral judgment that when it comes to enforcing criminal law American society, in effect, prefers to have many more Type II errors (false negatives) than it does Type I errors (false positives).[10] That preference arises from two interrelated grounds: one is the historical distrust of government that, as already noted, animates many critics of the Patriot Act.
But the other is, at least implicitly, a comparative valuation of the social costs attending the two types of error. We value liberty sufficiently highly that we see a great cost in any Type I error. And, though we realize that Type II errors free the guilty to return to the general population, thereby imposing additional social costs on society, we have a common sense understanding that those costs, while significant, are not so substantial that they threaten large numbers of citizens or core structural aspects of the American polity.
The post-September 11 world changes this calculus in a fundamental way. Most obviously, it changes is the cost of the Type II errors. Whatever the cost of freeing John Gotti or John Muhammed might be, they are substantially less then the potentially horrific costs of failing to stop the next al-Quaeda assault.
Thus, the theoretical rights-protective construct under which our law enforcement system operates must, of necessity, be modified to meet the new reality. We simply cannot afford a rule that “better 10 terrorists go free than that 1 innocent be mistakenly screened.”[11] Put another way, it may be better that 1 million visitors be screened than that 1 million Americans should die.
Are you listening, Mr. Mineta?
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I apologize for my abrupt headline. My reaction and opinion remain the same, nevertheless.
I repeat: Is Norman Mineta the best person there is at this time for this critical position?
I agree with Rush that so-called 'independents' are just afraid to take a stand. I LIKE being a partisan.
As for the insults...........could you fellows PLEASE come up with something more imaginative that "Kool-aid drinkers."
It's tired, it's stupid, and it's dead wrong. If you talked to 100 Republicans, you would find 100 gradations of views on issues. There's no Kool-aid drinking going on here.
And in addition, President Bush has done more for conservative causes than any President in my lifetime............and I was born in the 40's. Whether or not he meets your qualifications is irrelevant.
Nice talking to you, mr 'independent.'