Eric, I don't get it

Krauthammer's article is definitely one that should have got him spanked by his supervisor. If you follow along Krauthammer's advice, the day when a white boy blows himself up in the subway trains will only result in security getting another kick in the face. I agree with Par in that searching smartly is better than racial profiling. Set up some screening stations and put everyone through it. That will definitely put away this racial profiling garbage.

Security companies who are responsible for screening for weapons and such need better support anyway. All the initial fuss about the high turnover rate of airport security companies still exists. The Canadian government outsources airport security to private companies in order to demand government standards while paying less for the entire system. Chances are it's the same in the states. If anyone gets through with any sort of weapon the only people who get punished are the employees on the floor and most of them are either tired and disenchanted with their workplace, or will drop their job in a few months anyway. The idea that Canadian airports are more secure than they once were is more of an illusion. Half-brained policies and rules made in order to protect the bosses in the ivory tower do not have the employees in mind.

Here we are reading Krauthammer’s suggestion to further tighten the focus upon a certain group of people who walk through the screens? Hmmmm. Rather than inflaming the public with the idea of racial profiling and making everyone’s lives that much more miserable Krauthammer should just let the granny get scanned and stay quiet. Better yet, the next time Krauthammer decides to take to the air he should ask them to scan his person a few times for broken batteries.

hey i got a funny joke for you...

"what's the hardest thing about being a rollerblading Gundam?"

.....
youknow, youknow.

The Duel Gundam could indeed take down a Zaku. However the Duel Gundam was decommissioned in CE 71 and the Zaku was commissioned in CE 73. So this battle could not take place. Also the Duel Gundam was used by ZAFT and the Zaku was also used by ZAFT, giving more reason to this fight not taking place. Lastly this is not the final form of the Duel Gundam. When it was decommissioned it possesed a Armour Shroud system, which isn't on. Therefore this fight is fake. Unless it is the inner battle of Yzak Joule (Pilot of both the Duel Gundam and Zaku) then this battle could possibly take place.

That is all.

Ball's in your court, Al:

I'm not going to convince you. We might as well agree to disagree on this one.

I would like to say that to paint a security situation without racial profiling as one where we waste time on obvious non-threats is absurd.

Political correctness does not mean spending equal time stopping everyone. It does mean using better, more effective indicators than skin colour as a means of identifying potential threats. I would like to think it means doing things the smart way rather than the easy, ineffective way (ie. not stopping someone simply because of skin colour.) To make the easy way acceptable, I think, will end up precluding the smart way (unless the human tendency towards easy decisions and laziness has somehow changed without my realizing it.)

It comes down to pattern recognition. Trying to pick the terrorists out of a much larger group of people. It's like trying to pick blue triangles out of a much larger group assorted shapes and colors. The blue triangles fit into the patterns of "blue" and "triangle". So when you're searching for them, you're going to spend your available resources looking at the things that are blue, and the things that are triangles. You're not going to waste much time looking at things that are red and circular. This seems obvious when you remove the human aspect from it. Unfortunately it's not that simple. Political correctness states that we should spend as much time staring at red circles as we do any other shape/color. Because if we don't then those triangles and blue shapes are going to cry foul.
Suspicious activity is a pattern that is worth looking for, albeit a harder one to discern. Given the patterns of terrorist activity, brown guys acting suspiciously are a much more likely to be what you are looking for, and therefore worth spending the resources on. Searching the 'grandmother from Poughkeepsie' is like looking at the red circle.
Unfortunately the "brown" aspect is part of the pattern. That's just the way it is. Just like "white" is part of the pattern for serial killers dumping dead hookers in a ditch. Or killing their pregnant wives and staging a kidnapping.
Of course you are going to have very inconvenient false positives during the search. That's the nature of picking things out of a crowd. Even moreso when it's a situation whereby you can't allow any false negatives.

Searching a 'grandmother from Poughkeepsie' just to make the argument that they're not racially profiling is equally rediculous.

I'm not saying that you should have quotas of how many grandmothers you search to make me feel better that you suspect certain groups more than others. What I am saying is that there are far more reliable and effective ways of screening people than simply race or religion.

We should be training police to look for the signs of suspicious activity, not telling them that someone who 'looks Arab' should be searched before a caucasian. Nor should we be justifying profiling by saying "well, statistically, ...".

I can make the "of late" argument in any number of ways. Of late, residents of Leeds are blowing stuff up. Of late, 20-somethings are blowing stuff up. Of late, disaffected and fanatical muslim youth, with backpacks, associating with Egyptian biochemists are blowing stuff up. What the fuck does that mean, and how can we possibly turn that into a relevant predictor of future attacks?

How does limiting what a poorly defined group of people are allowed to do (sure, you're not prohibiting them from carrying backpacks in the subway, or taking a flight without shaving first, but you're sure as hell making it way more difficult for them than anyone else to do these things) make the rest of us safer, or even effectively use the resources we have?

*shrug
we should also do gun checks at schools for white kids (since they've had a history of shooting) crackdowns on asians for gang membership, and siftouts for gawky freckly faced redheads for chronic masturbation.
maybe i was too young to recall, but i don't remember any talk of racial profiling post Oklahoma City, nor after IRA attacks.
in any case the truth of the matter is racial profiling has been in use and will probably stay in use -whether or not it's effective at all and what effects it has on our civil liberties at all is a whole other argument that doesn't always translate to the people "enforcing security" on the ground level.