What might work, at least for elected officials, their appointees, lackeys, judicial nominations, and lapdogs, would be ETHICAL profiling. Perhaps a few psychologists could take some time away from assisting torturers. They could then develop testing instruments to determine whether someone is ethically equipped to speak honestly, exercise responsibility, and obey the Constitution they are sworn to uphold.

Or we could just keep annoying the innocent with racism, invasive searches, and devotion to stereotypes. Hmmm, how to choose...

Want to know what's "worse than useless?" Strip searching grandmothers, kindergartners and frequent fliers while pointedly avoiding scrutiny of those clearly fitting a terrorist-like profile.

And another with safety checks and let the market decide. Personally I don't really care if you blow up or crash into a skyscraper. Maybe you do.

....are the ones who pose the biggest threat to the US. Take a look at history: women's health clinic bombings, assassination of "abortion doctors", bombing of government buildings (McVeigh was part of a white supremacist movement that identifies itself as Christian)

and now they are signing up for training in the US military, setting themselves up in military academies and in the military chaplain service to run a holy war against Islam. (The GWOT as a crusade. They talk of it this way.)

Muslim terrorists are the LEAST of our worries.

fundamentalism and rejectionism

should be "fundamentalism and accomodation."

That's what you get for typing too fast.

Yet under the guise of 'tolerance' many people end up equating ethnicity with a religious or cultural system. They then use that specious position to attack any critic of said religion or culture as a 'racist'.

I see this happen all the time. Someone posts a letter saying, "Islamic theology is facing a crisis as it continues to navigate its encounter with modernity, and must free itself of the fetters of both fundamentalism and rejectionism if it is to survive," and everyone piles onto them saying, "You only say that because you hate Arabs."

It's everywhere. I'm serious, every other letter to Salon is the same damn thing.

I am a socialist and lesbian...

You only say that because you hate Arabs.

This ridiculous political correctness will destroy us all. As LeeA so sagely observes:

That is, it is an obvious waste of time to check elderly men and women, small children, or the occasional monk or priest just for the sake of political correctness.

Yes. As anyone back from Iraq knows, children, babies, the elderly, and obvious religious officiants are never involved in plots to blow things up.

SOME degree of profiling at airports is needed, just as police cannot let themselves bow to pressure where obvious gang bangers are concerned.

Absolutely. How else would we have ever stopped those gang-banger terrorists that we caught ... uh ... when was it that we caught them again? I swear, it must have been just recently.

Wait, what about that shoe bombing guy? Richard Reid...allasalaam Gonzalez, was it? Wasn't that his name? He was some kind of suspicious-looking ethnic minority, right? The only way we ever could have caught him would have been through racial profiling. By the authorities, of course.

What, do you expect airline passengers to just stop some guy themselves? Wait until he's sitting there with the explosive shoe in hand and then stop him? This isn't television, people — in the real world, only Jack Bauer can do things like that.

Normal-looking, non-tattooed, middle-aged white people have never committed crimes or blown up anyone in America. For pity's sake, why can't we just let our police profile by race, as God intended, and we'd all be much safer?

was tased at the airport. You can never be too sure or too self righteous.

I agree racial profiling is unjust. Yet under the guise of 'tolerance' many people end up equating ethnicity with a religious or cultural system. They then use that specious position to attack any critic of said religion or culture as a 'racist'. Sadly, Salon is full of these people, who put politics before intellectual integrity, especially when the topic is Muslim abuses of human rights from terrorism to gender inequality.

The perverse irony lost on these people shouting 'racism' is that:

a) by assigning arbitrary characteristics to ethnic descent (even upon themselves), they are engaging in crass textbook racism

b) attacking their opponents with ridiculous charges is something I expect of conservatives. Seriously, the overuse of 'racism' to silence critics is the exact equivalent of the traitor/socialist/why-do-you-hate-America tactics one sees at Fox News.

Standard disclaimer necessary to ward off the string of gotcha-attempt no-responses: I am not a Christian or Jew, nor do respect those faiths any more than Islam. I am a socialist and lesbian, before some small-minded lefty whom I just called out as an intelelctual clown accuses me of being a Bushie, Fox News-watcher, etc.

...I have to sit on the fence in one regard. That is, it is an obvious waste of time to check elderly men and women, small children, or the occasional monk or priest just for the sake of political correctness. By all means, check folks who are in an age range where there might at least be some vague possibility of nefarious intent, but do not squander the precious resource of time to make the ACLU happy. SOME degree of profiling at airports is needed, just as police cannot let themselves bow to pressure where obvious gang bangers are concerned. You have a MS13 or Norteno tattoo, you're getting checked, like it or not, and p-c policies be damned.

It sure seems obvious, but I'm glad there's a report out showing it's true. Another blow to the "24" fantasies of some people.

I live in France part of the year, and the highest estimate I've seen is 7-8% of French population is Muslim and some of that is not North African

So it's counterproductive to look suspiciously at every 10th person.