As they say in Congress, I would like to expand and clarify my previous remarks on TSA security screening. Abby Wisse Schachter at the New York Post has a thoughtful response taking issue with my endorsement of body scanners and pat-downs. She concedes that racial/ethnic profiling doesn’t work, but goes on to argue:
I differ with Boot when he dismisses behavioral profiling because it isn’t a perfect cure-all. Wouldn’t it be possible to profile everyone in line at security by conducting an interview to suss out an individual [who] seems like they might be a security threat based on their behavior, then have a second layer of pat-downs and nudie screening for those who didn’t pass the interview? Why is it necessary to essentially terrorize children in order to provide security which if we’re being realistic is not going to work 100 percent of the time. I’m not convinced the TSA has exhausted the benefits of other less invasive security techniques that they can plausibly claim this is the only way to go.
I was not dismissing behavioral profiling. I think it is vital and necessary but insufficient. To truly secure anything, you need multiple defenses. Thus military bases have an outer and an inner perimeter so that if the first is breached, the second will stand. In the same way, we need various defenses to stop terrorists from hitting our aviation system. Behavioral profiling is certainly part of it. So is interviewing at least some passengers. But there are limits to how far we can go with interviews. This is something that Israeli airport security personnel do extensively (I always seem to get asked if I’m Jewish and to name my rabbi), but they have the luxury of guarding only one airport. In the U.S., we have hundreds and hundreds of airports with thousands of flights every day. Imagine subjecting every single passenger to the kind of (sometimes lengthy) interrogation that Israeli security personnel do. It would slow the entire system to a crawl and generate more complaints than the body scanners. It would also be much more difficult to do because you would have to train tens of thousands of personnel in very difficult interrogation techniques. Far easier to train them to monitor a body scanner or to pat you down.
Even when done by well-trained Israeli operatives, the interviews are sometimes insufficient. That is made clear by this account (from the website of Israel’s security agency, Shabak) of a 1988 attempted bombing of an El Al flight from London to Tel Aviv:
The passenger, a 32 year old Irish woman named Anne-Marie Murphy, who was six months pregnant, arrived at the check-in desk some forty minutes before it closed. She was approached and questioned by the deputy security officer as part of routine passenger security checks.
No suspicious signs were revealed during her questioning. The passenger, who gave the impression of being a simple woman, responded in the negative when asked if she had been given anything to bring to Israel. During the questioning she was calm, and revealed no sign of nervousness. In the check of her baggage, suspicious signs came to light: a Commodore scientific calculator with an electric cable was found; the bag raised suspicion due to its unexpectedly heavy weight. The security officer’s examination of the bag revealed explosives concealed in the bottom of the bag, under a double panel. He called the police, and the passenger was arrested.
Turns out Ms. Murphy — who did not fit the profile of a terrorist or act like one — had been given a bomb by her Jordanian boyfriend. In this case, only physical examination of her luggage revealed the device. But that wouldn’t work with some of the more recent al-Qaeda bombers, who are secreting explosives in their underwear or elsewhere on their person. The only way they can be reliably detected is with the body scanners and pat-downs that the TSA is now rolling out.
By all means, we should do various kinds of profiling and interviewing, but we also need another line of defense. This is it.
Don’t understand the comment about Norm Coleman running ten points ahead of the top of the ticket. McCain got 44%, 1,275,000 votes; Coleman got 42%, 1,211,000.
I read an article early this year calling on Republicans to adopt “decentralization” as a rallying point. More power to local communities and individuals, more freedom from centralized control. It can be presented, honestly, as an empowering and liberating concept. It doesn’t require any change in conservative philosophy, just a new marketing for a new generation. As a unifying thesis I think it would have legs: Power to the People!
John, it was because the numbers don’t equate in pure percentage terms. Coleman was in a 3-way race that was the exact equivalent of the Bush41-Clinton-Perot race of 1992, and exit polls showed that the third party guy’s support was 4-1 out of Coleman’s constituency- and Norm still got a small plurality, while his Democrat opponent ran more than 10 points behind Obama in Minnesota.
Coleman, yes, and Pwalenty even more, recognize that Minnesota is an at-root Scandanavian “progressive” state populated by Norwegian and Swedish immigrant descendants who are not naturally suspicious of government, they just think everything should be fine if good people who talk nice are in office. In the 1930′s, there were two socialist governors in a row, and today organized labor runs public life almost as much as it does in Michigan (the Northeast part of the state has a solid bloc of iron mining votes, the Twin Cities metro area is owned by public employee unions, especially teachers).
What the party leaders should consider, imho.
Firstly, I want to know what are the core principles. I want these principles enshrined in its charter or its constitution. The principles that matter to me, and ones that I also believe to have broad appeals are:
These may not be new ideas, but they are great ideas that have made us great and should continue to guide our nation forward. The current issues and challenges should always be considered, referenced and debated on these core principles. While these should be our principles, our actions should remain decisive, ethical and magnanimous. Our means must be compatible with our goals.
Secondly our spending priorities should be:
Thirdly I would like the party to interact more with its members. The party cannot be just about fund raising and votes. I would like to see that every year (or every other year) a convention is held for party members. During this convention current stance in response to current issues and challenges should be addressed. Proponents and opponents should debate where and how the party should respond. Then the members (those present and over the net) votes and thus party positions delineated and updated. Politicians can also make announcement for the upcoming year.
Fourthly political candidates for the party should be judged based on how close they are to the core principles of the party. Their appeals are determined through a series of state level election. The states should be grouped regionally; one state from each region would then hold its primary election each month. Allow a few weeks for the candidates to debate, retool, hold rallies, and then repeat with a new set of states, again one from each region. The states within each regional group can decide among themselves what order they shall hold their primary election. Likely I would prefer that each primary election is limited to party members but at the same time, each primary election should also serve as recruiting opportunity for non-members to join up and thus vote.
What I do not want my party to be a hateful opposition party. When they other party cannot do something, we should take no glee if the America would suffer for it, we should say we can do it. When they do something right, we don’t say that it was no good, we say we can do better. I also do not want my party to be into identity politics. We should court Hispanics because they share many of our principles of small government, conservative fiscal policy, and economic opportunity. We should reach out to African-Americans because only through returning to traditional family value, accepting a culture of personal responsibility, and embracing economic opportunity can they be strong and free. We should stop bashing gays. We should be pro-immigration and come up with a new term for “illegal immigrants.” We cannot be viewed as an anti-minority or anti-immigrant party.
Nothing wrong with this, at all, people should get it more.
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