TSA Backlash Week: An Excuse For Racial Profiling?

If Charles Krauthammer has his way:

"We pretend that we go through this nonsense as a small price paid to ensure the safety of air travel. Rubbish. This has nothing to do with safety - 95 percent of these inspections, searches, shoe removals and pat-downs are ridiculously unnecessary. The only reason we continue to do this is that people are too cowed to even question the absurd taboo against profiling - when the profile of the airline attacker is narrow, concrete, uniquely definable and universally known. So instead of seeking out terrorists, we seek out tubes of gel in stroller pouches."

TSA screening is a bad, ineffective policy. Racial profiling would be, too. Instead of alienating everybody with invasive measures, let's just alienate the brown people! And without actually improving our security! Forbes' Abigail Esman:

According to a recent report by the Bipartisan Policy Center’s National Security Preparedness Group, statistically speaking, the one most likely to be a Muslim terrorist is the sandy-haired guy in jeans. In fact, according to the report, the majority of Muslim jihadists in America are white and born in the USA (21%) – the one exception being Somali immigrants, who top the list at 31%.

That fact explains such figures as Colleen LaRose, aka “Jihad Jane,” and Daniel Patrick Boyd, the North Carolina drywall contractor indicted in 2009 on charges of training others to wage jihad.

Terrorist ideology is just that: an idea. It's not genetic, can't be seen in the color of a person's skin or the length of their beard. TSA Backlash Week has a good reason for existing, but the answer to the problem isn't to shove it off onto foreigners and minorities.

Leaving The Middle Class For Poverty

A very depressing article:

"The Census Bureau recently reported that the poverty rate in the United States rose to 14.3 percent last year, the highest level in more than 50 years.

Texas and Florida saw the most people fall below the line. In Florida alone, 323,000 people became newly poor last year, bringing the state's poverty total to 2.7 million.

The numbers tell another tale as well: Nationwide, in black households such as Walker's, income plunged an average of 4.4 percent in 2009, almost three times the drop among whites. The number of blacks living below the official poverty line - $21,756 for a family of four - increased by 7 percent in just one year."

Public Won't Be Silenced At Philly City Council Meetings

I've not covered City Council in Philadelphia, but I have elsewhere, and I can tell you that public comment sessions can be a mix of the provocative and tedious. Still, I've got to think thatthis is good news for Philly governance: "The state Supreme Court, in a 4-3 ruling made public yesterday, says Council has been violating the state's Sunshine Act by refusing to allow people to comment on legislation during Thursday's weekly sessions. Council argued that allowing people to comment in committee hearings before legislation is considered by the full Council was adequate."

I don't know that this will lead to any improvements around town. And some of the council members do a pretty good job of listening to their constituents, from what I can tell. But I don't have a problem reminding everybody that it's our government, not theirs.

Philly Police Corruption Watch

That's expensive: "Over the past three fiscal years, city taxpayers have shelled out $31.6 million to settle lawsuits brought against the department. The majority of the payments - $20.8 million - went to settle complaints of civil-rights violations by police officers, according to figures provided by the city's Department of Finance."

Good Morning!

May be slow blogging today. I'm certain there will be TSA Backlash Week entries, however.

TSA Backlash Week: John Pistole Gets The Business

The leader of the TSA went before the Senate today to defend his agency's invasive airport screening techniques. Apparently he demanded to be given pat-down before giving the green light to the technique:

"“Yes, it was more invasive than what I was used to,” said Pistole. “Of course, what’s in my mind … is what are the plots out there, how are we informed by the latest intelligence and latest technology and what do we need to do to ensure the American people that as they travel that we are being thorough.”

“So yes, it is clearly more invasive. The purpose of that is obviously to detect the type of devices that we had not seen before last Christmas. I am very sensitive to and concerned about people’s privacy concerns and I want to work through that as best we can.” 

Pistole told a separate panel of senators yesterday that the pat-down technique is so thorough that, had it been used, it would have thwarted the suspected Christmas Day bomber, who allegedly hid an explosive device in his underwear. "

Is it churlish to note that the Christmas Day bomber actually was thwarted? Sure, he got through airport security, but once he started trying to accomplish his evil act, the plane's passengers and crew intervened. And it seems to me that ought to be OK. The man was stopped without body scanners and without invasive patdowns -- as, incidentally, was Richard Reid, the "shoe bomber" who forced all of us to take off our footwear every time we go through security. Al Qaeda keeps failing, and we keep ratcheting up security anyway. God help us when and if they're successful again. The anal probes probably won't be far behind.

TSA Backlash Week: Col. Nathan Jessup Gives Us An Earful

Emaw channels Nathan Jessup, now working for TSA:

"You want the truth? You want the TRUTH!? You can't handle the truth! Son, we live in a world that has airports, and those airports have to be guarded by men with latex gloves. Who's gonna do it? You? You, Mr. Jillette?

I have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom! You weep for your groped genitals and you curse the TSA. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know: that the groping of your private parts, while tragic, probably saves lives. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives!

You don't want the truth, because deep down in places you don't talk about on your blogs and on Twitter, you want me in that airport! You need me in your underwear! We use words like 'bend over', 'spread 'em', 'cop a feel'. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending something."