Eminent Domain Stuff
New London Update (2/24/06)
Bad NLDC!
Coverage of the Rally at New London's City Hall (w/ pics)
Friday, July 16, 2004
Terror Training On Planes?
You be the judge...but read this article:
Terror in the Skies, Again?
I've said it before and I'll say it again...there is nothing inherently wrong with racial profiling. We absolutley must keep our goals firmly in mind. Our goal: Stop acts of Terror before they happen.By Annie Jacobsen
[...]
After seeing 14 Middle Eastern men board separately (six together, eight individually) and then act as a group, watching their unusual glances, observing their bizarre bathroom activities, watching them congregate in small groups, knowing that the flight attendants and the pilots were seriously concerned, and now knowing that federal air marshals were on board, I was officially terrified.. Before I'm labeled a racial profiler or -- worse yet -- a racist, let me add this. A month ago I traveled to India to research a magazine article I was writing. My husband and I flew on a jumbo jet carrying more than 300 Hindu and Muslim men and women on board. We traveled throughout the country and stayed in a Muslim village 10 miles outside Pakistan. I never once felt fearful. I never once felt unsafe. I never once had the feeling that anyone wanted to hurt me. This time was different.
If the vast majority of Terrorists are Outter Mongolians, then would it make any sense to 1) check all Inuits closely or 2) limit the number of Outter Mongolains we can have in secondary questioning for a given flight? No! of course not. Jeeze. If you were going to bring down a plane with a bomb, and you knew that the American government could, by law, search only 2 of your ethic group per flight...how many bad guys would you send? Is this really so difficult?
The argument often used to oppose racial profiling is based on 'common' crime. People will say that we should not pull over more black drivers because we will end up creating a selection bias that will cause it to appear that there are more black criminals than there are in reality. Valid or not, this reasoning does not even begin to hold up in the case of Terrorists. If the anti-racial profiling camp is wrong about pulling over black drives, the result will be that we 1) don't catch as many criminals and 2) don't bother innocent people just minding their own business.
In the case of Terror, however, if we fail to catch the bad guys because we're queasy about singling out Middle Eastern men...we'll, we've already seen what can happen. And if you think that 9/11 was bad think what would have happened if those hijackers had managed to get some radioactive material onboard...
In the end we have a choice: Single out the group of people who have been 100% of the successful Terrorists within the borders of the United States and maybe bother a few innocent people or watch more of our fellow (and definitely innocent) citizens die horrible deaths.
Where do you stand?
Update:
Michelle Malkin has some confirmation of this story (via NE Republican).
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