Norm Mineta Leaving!

[Annie]

Now maybe they'll do the profiling that should be done.

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=2111183

 

[Annie]

I figured I'd see something like this sooner or later.

http://www.investors.com/editorial/IBDArticles.asp?artsec=20&artnum=3&issue=20060627

Mineta's Welcome Exit, Stage Left

Posted 6/27/2006

Leadership: When Norman Mineta steps down as transportation secretary next month, few who care about security in the air will shed a tear. He and his civil-rights cops have made pilots the enemy since 9-11.

United Airlines and American Airlines lost hundreds of passengers and crew and hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue after Middle Eastern passengers crashed four of their jumbo jets on 9-11.

Ten days after the attacks, as rescue workers were still pulling bodies from the rubble at Ground Zero, Mineta sent a letter to all airlines forbidding pilots from singling out Arab and Muslim passengers for additional security scrutiny, even when they act suspiciously or threateningly.

He warned them that they would be breaking the law if they did, even though the law also gives pilots the authority to deny any passengers who pose a threat to the safety of other passengers or crew.

Dozens of pilots have exercised that authority by kicking Arab or Muslim passengers who posed a threat off their planes. Mineta in turn has slapped their airlines with millions in fines and ordered them to put crews through ethnic-sensitivity training.

Most security officials agree that targeted profiling would be the best way to prevent future hijackings, since the terrorist threat, statistically, is from Muslim males under 30. But Mineta and his top civil-rights crusader, Sam Podberesky, view even data-based profiling as a big no-no.

In fact, Podberesky, who like Mineta, is a Clinton holdover, is on record saying that even if an airline captain removed four Arab men brandishing guns on his plane, he'd still send a letter of warning to the airline scolding it for considering "their race or nationality."

Mineta says he'd rather see security harass grannies and Girl Scouts at airports than offend young Muslim men who fit the terrorist profile. He says he can see no justification for gate crew to point out even three young Arab men kneeling and praying together in Arabic before they board a flight.

To show how blind his tolerance is, Mineta hired a young Muslim man as one of his top aides. It turns out Suhail Khan is not just any Muslim. He's the son of the founder of a hard-line Wahhabi mosque in Santa Clara, Calif., that hosted and raised money for Osama bin Laden's deputy — not once, but twice — last decade. Al-Qaida No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahiri bought satellite phones with the funds. Mineta only proved that blind tolerance can also be dumb — very dumb.

Mineta, a minority himself, cites his childhood experience at a Japanese relocation camp during WWII as reason to ban Arab and Muslim profiling at airports now. "As one of 120,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry forcibly interned by the United States government during World War II, I understand how dangerous times such as these can be to civil rights and civil liberties," he says.

Never mind that no one ever argued for interning Muslims, or even profiling all Muslims — just young Muslim men who behave suspiciously on planes.

Mineta doesn't want them emotionally scarred as he was scarred. He never lets anyone forget how he was detained. And the media never fail to help their Democrat darling help us remember his painful boyhood memories.

"Wearing his Cub Scout uniform and carrying a baseball mitt and bat (which officials confiscated), Mineta was taken to a holding facility in Arcadia (Calif.) before being transported to a camp in Wyoming," the Los Angeles Times laments in one of many sappy farewells to Mineta in the prestige press. All fail to note the roadblocks the secretary erected to effective aviation security after 9-11.

We, on the other hand, say good riddance to No Profilin' Norm. We hope he takes Podberesky, Khan and his other aides who have sworn pilots to politically correct suicide.

 

[KarlMarx]

Now maybe they'll do the profiling that should be done.

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=2111183

I understand that Norm Minetta is a Democrat. Bush should have appointed another person for this position from the beginning of his first administration.

I think Bush was trying to work with the other side, i.e. the Democrats, when he appointed him. The Democrats have long since demonstrated that they're not team players, unless, of course, you do things entirely their way!