TRAVEL DAYS – AT 8:25 A.M. ET:  Now, on some of the heaviest travel days of the year, we'll see if the new airport security systems work.

A poll now shows that most Americans support the invasive screening and pat-downs.  I understand their concerns.  But what is hilarious here is that the controversial techniques are getting their strongest support from some of Obama's most fanatical supporters, people who surely would have called this "fascism" or "police state tactics" if George W. Bush had employed them.  For example, terminal loonbag Cynthia Tucker of The Atlanta Constitution:

For all the carping from airline passengers over the intensive new security screenings, it’s time for Obama to come out and strongly defend them. Whenever administration officials suggest that they will adjust overly zealous measures, their critics think they’re backing down. So Obama and his administration ought to staunchly defend the new procedures, without equivocation, everytime they are asked about them.

My, my.  What will they defend next?  Waterboarding?  Well, if Barack wants it...

It seems to me that what the Obamans are afraid of isn't terrorism, but alternative security measures that violate their 1960s souls.  From CBS News:

...the uproar has prompted some to ask - albeit tentatively in some cases - if the time had come to consider using racial and other profiling as a security measure.

Complaining last week about the new procedures, conservative Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthhammer wrote that "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."

At a debate last night hosted by Intelligence Squared US, syndicated columnist Deroy Murdock argued that "we want the TSA and others to recognize that the current threat to passengers and airliners comes almost exclusively from one source, and we all know what it is, young males between about 18 and 35 who practice a fundamentalist strain of the Islamic faith, and generally hail from the Middle East, as well as largely Muslim nations in Africa and South Asia."

Well, that last may be too restrictive a description, but profiling of various kinds makes sense.  The Israelis, who have had great success with air security, engage in behavioral (not racial) profiling.  While there have been excessive incidents, they seem to be relatively few.

But profiling gets the left's juices going.  And there are certainly kinds of profiling that are offensive.  But behavioral profiling by well-trained security people might have stopped last year's Christmas bomber, who tried to blow up an airliner over Detroit.  The problem with the invasive screeners and pat-downs is that the terrorist class now knows exactly what it is up against, and will plan accordingly. 

Political correctness takes its toll.

November 24, 2010