Are you fed up with the TSA and new security

[Big Ugly Tall Texan]

And the more I hear about this, the more I am just flabbergasted that this guy was able to get on the plane in the first place.

Forget profiling as a Muslim male. It wasn't needed.

The one-way ticket paid for with cash should have tripped all kinds of checks which would have brought up him being on the watch list. That would also be an example of profiling, by the way.

Flying from the Netherlands to Detroit with no luggage? DING DING DING!! But that would also be profiling.

I have heard a mention of some kind of problem with his passport, but no details - another indicator of something wrong.

When his father reported he was a potential terrorist, THAT should have set off bells and whistles and got his name inserted in all kinds of computer-assessed lists.

And on top of that, this guy was more likely than not throwing off all kinds of body language clues.

Somehow, they missed all of it and he got on that plane.

We got lucky. Common sense tells you we won't keep on getting lucky. Somehow we need to develop some skills to go along with that luck.

[Jake]

Originally Posted by acclude

Jake, that's not the right kind of thinking. Did you forget about the terrorists in Cuba, Mexico, Peru, the UK, Germany, Ireland, and many other places in South America and Europe. Don't forget about the American terrorists as well (Tim McVeigh as an example). Guess what, none of them have any ties to Muslim beliefs.

Acclude, if you review my post, I said the Israelis have that view, and a little more of the same view would help us, better than patting down little old great grandmothers. I had thoughts about Tim McVeigh when I posted that.

My view is if someone swarthy and Olive Skinned wants to come to this country, they can subject themselves to an extra pat down, body cavity search, X-rays, and a butt f------- if necessary or stay in the rat hole they came from. The last guys to try to blow up their private parts or his foot on a jetliner were both Olive skinned, swarthy and bowed towards Mecca. Profiling that profile doesn't bother me one bit.

Invite all those folks to your house you want to for tea. I'll invite the Bhuddists, Hindus, Catholics, Jews and Christians. Moslems don't have our (meaning the groups coming over to my house to have tea) best interests at heart. Until Armageddon is done and finished with, this Bull Hockey is going to continue.

[Kappy]

BUTT, you keep talking about how your America is disappearing. Frankly, if the America where it's OK to profile people is disappearing... well... I'm not losing too much sleep.

We would be served thousands of times better by using common sense. Common sense tells me that if it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, and is smart as a human, it will simply try to look like something that isn't a duck.

If we start profiling, all that will do is piss off more of the world (which I know you think is OK, since we can apparently afford to piss everyone off, regardless of a global economy or the fact that we're less than five percent of the population of the planet). We stand even less of a chance of catching any terrorists. If anything, we'll simply (as Acclude pointed out) create more terrorists.

During my life, I've seen racism slowly begin to ebb. It will never entirely go away, but I like the fact that some folks I know of African descent can tell me that when they go to the store, eyes aren't on them to make sure they don't steal anything. What you propose here is the first step towards a "common sense" effort to undo any positive work in the civil rights movement. It starts with this. How long before we don't let Muslims buy homes in our neighborhoods? It isn't a stretch from there to not letting them vote... then we start looking wider afield... we start letting only Christians vote... we ban the Catholics next... Well, I say "we," but I'll be booted long before then.

I'm a big proponent of the belief that you don't just vote on one issue. No issue is important enough that it will completely sway me. That isn't always true, though. We've talked about one in another thread where the Republicans made themselves completely unattractive to me. This profiling thing... that's on the road to another such issue.

[Kappy]

Originally Posted by Jake

Acclude, if you review my post, I said the Israelis have that view, and a little more of the same view would help us, better than patting down little old great grandmothers. I had thoughts about Tim McVeigh when I posted that.

My view is if someone swarthy and Olive Skinned wants to come to this country, they can subject themselves to an extra pat down, body cavity search, X-rays, and a butt f------- if necessary or stay in the rat hole they came from. The last guys to try to blow up their private parts or his foot on a jetliner were both Olive skinned, swarthy and bowed towards Mecca. Profiling that profile doesn't bother me one bit.

Invite all those folks to your house you want to for tea. I'll invite the Bhuddists, Hindus, Catholics, Jews and Christians. Moslems don't have our (meaning the groups coming over to my house to have tea) best interests at heart. Until Armageddon is done and finished with, this Bull Hockey is going to continue.

I'm olive skinned and my folks have been here... well, a damned long time. On one side back to the 1850's or so. On the other... I dunno. I think back to the 1820's. And we didn't come from a rat hole.

Frankly, if you could find a way to separate me out of that profile, I still won't agree with it.

I don't think America can remain a country of freedom... but only for some of us. I cannot help but believe that profiling is a violation of both the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments. Frankly, anyone who makes an argument on this without addressing the Constitutional issue cannot have any credibility when arguing for the 2A with me. The best argument would concern the fact that some folks coming into this country are not citizens... and that's still a very weak argument.

So... profiling or 2A? You can't have both.

[Jake]

Kappy, when you are young, it's easy to be an idealist. Someday, you'll become a realist. I don't think civil rights helped race relations at all. You didn't live through that era, I did. No one likes things forced on them. I never looked at races with any disdain. I fortuneatly grew up with the spirit of the song "Jesus Loves the little children" but I have become more racial since the laws about civil rights have been changed, and watch unqualified people get jobs over better qualified people, folks getting entitlments instead of working for a living. I always abhorred slavery, or trying to keep any group down because of their race, but I have my own mind and greatly despise anyone telling me how I should think. Civil rights legislation did more to hurt the overall race relations of this country than anything else. Folks quite simply do better changing thought on their own instead of having someone force it down their throats. Today, we have folks thinking they should be entitled because of what my Great Great Grandfather may have done. I didn't have one thing to do with all that.

[Kappy]

Nevertheless... 2A or profiling?

[Jake]

Originally Posted by Kappy

Nevertheless... 2A or profiling?

I don't guess I understand your question?

[acclude]

The only good thing I can see to come from profiling is your convenience, and by "your" I'm talking about everyone that's pro-profiling.

It would be effective for very short periods of time (even though I don't think it's justified). As I pointed out, the enemy will change their tactics making profiling ineffective in the end. And as Kappy pointed out, you can't tell by how someone looks a lot of times anyways. And as BUTT mentioned, common sense is crucial, but I'd like to point out that it's completely different from profiling.

Profiling tells me that any olive skinned male 18-30 is a terrorist. This causes so many problems on so many levels that I won't even get into it here.

Common sense tells me that anyone who is nervous as shit, pacing, not dressed appropriately, and chanting or praying to themselves is probably up to no good regardless of their age/skin/nationality/religion.

They are separate. We need to implement more common sense, not profiling.

[Kappy]

Originally Posted by Jake

I don't guess I understand your question?

If you choose to forget the 4th and the 14th Amendment (which pretty obviously forbid profiling), you open the door to completely forgetting the 1st and the 2nd, along with several others. Hell, the 4th is a goodly portion of what protects the 2nd.

We are a nation of laws. By weakening part of the Constitution, you weaken the entire document. You cannot simply choose, à la carte, which laws we shall follow or which rights we will guarantee. It's kind of an all or nothing pot.

This is exactly the argument many of us are making concerning health care. How can we fall back on arguing that the 10th Amendment protects us from nationalized health care if we are unwilling to protect EVERY citizen's protection under the 4th and the 14th?

Principles are only principles when we believe in them 100% of the time. Otherwise they're just words we mouth. That isn't "idealism." That's just fact.

So... do you want to live in a world where
A) The 2A isn't worth the paper it is printed on just so that we can profile Muslims?
B) We don't profile Muslims and can still fight for the 2A and expect to be taken seriously?

I believe that we can fight for the 2A while also guaranteeing basic civil liberties to Muslims. Not only can we do that, but failure to do so will simply make the problem worse.

[Jake]

I think the 4th and 14th amendment only should protect the citizens of this country. The 4th is already violated everytime you give up your carry on to be scanned or walk thru a metal detector, or have a wand waved over your body or empty the contents of your pockets. Ok, Ill grant you the olive skinned swarthy types should have their passport names read first, and then if their name doesn't sound Jewish, then pat them down good and if you find bottles of chemicals where their nuts should be, then give them a prayer rug, face em to the east and then search their body cavities. Two years or less and you will realize I am right. We don't owe terrorist any right to due process at all if they are from another country and trying to blow up an airplane or anything else. They are enemy combatents in non uniform and should be taken out to the tarmac and a bullet placed thru their terrorist skulls. They have claimed a war of Jihad, and I thinks it's time we returned the favor. Of course you are in a state that people welcome illegal aliens and give safe havens to, and we are three generations, 1,500 miles and light years apart in our thinking. I have had the fortune of having a less liberal education than you have. Our country has sufficient folks to manage the amount of country we have now, and it's time to close the borders to any group of people, even if just 10% of their native country wants to see the USA destroyed. Sometime you need to watch the twin towers fall down about 20 times again and tell me I'm wrong. I have a right to want to keep the moslems out. Armeggedon is here, they have joined the fight and it's time we did too.