Another issue that should be front and center again is ethnic profiling ... Here in the U.S., the arrests should be a reminder of the dangers posed by a politically correct system of searching 80-year-old airplane passengers with the same vigor as screeners search young men of Muslim origin. There is no civil right to board an airplane without extra hassle ...Actually, there is such a civil right--and it's explicated by the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Whatever our feelings about ethnic profiling, concerns regarding discrimination on basis of race or ethnic group should never be casually swept aside under the heading of "political correctness."
And besides, there is no such thing as "Muslim origin." One of the 24 men arrested in London was born Don Stewart-Whyte. Richard Reid, the would-be shoe bomber, was half-Jamaican. Ethnic profiling has made terrorist bombers a more ethnically diverse group, but it is no substitute for more substantive security measures. To accept it as such isn't just unconstitutional; it's dangerous.
