ACLU Opposes Safe Air Travel
By Isaiah Z. Sterrett (11/17/04)
THE ACLU is at it again. Instead of bleating about some Ten Commandments poster in Indiana, now they're hot about airport safety. In a startling development, they oppose it.
Flying, per se, doesn't usually bother me. It's the possibility of being threatened with box-cutters by insane Islamist savages that fuels my airport woes. My trepidation, insignificant as it may be, is not likely to cease for many years to come. (If they'll change, I'll change.) But if Kerry had been elected, it would be worse. Kerry would have been Clinton all over again--and the Clinton counterterrorism efforts led to nothing but the perception that, as Osama said, the American soldier is a "paper tiger."
Bush is indeed good news for America's travelers. On foreign policy, he is the polar opposite of Kerry, and I guarantee that air travel would have sizably decreased if the Massachusetts liberal had won. Just as many Americans waited apprehensively after September 11 to fly again, many more Americans would have chosen different means of transportation under a President-Elect Kerry. The only people in the industry who would have been pleased by a Kerry victory are Amtrak workers.
Unlike President Bush, the American Civil Liberties Union is not interested in air security. Like Sen. Kerry, they prefer sensitivity to safety.
Last week, the "nonpartisan" ACLU filed a lawsuit challenging Logan International Airport's "behavior pattern recognition program" on the grounds that it "condones" racial- and ethnic- profiling. The suit alleges that Logan's safety procedures are unconstitutional, and the litigants are asking for monetary damages.
John Reinstein, head of the Massachusetts ACLU, says that the program "is another unfortunate example" of how we poor, poor Americans "are being asked to surrender basic freedoms in the name of security," adding, "[t]his allows the police to stop anyone, any time, for any reason."
Imagine! In an airport, you could be stopped! At any time! Where, exactly, has Reinstein been hiding for the last three years? Has he not been to an airport? Has he not turned on the TV? Airport employees are completely devoted to stopping passengers. This is their career goal. Everything at an airport, save for the airplanes and the newspaper shops, is designed to stop you from arriving at your gate. Instead of babbling about Logan, Reinstein should visit it.
The ACLU's suit is based on the heartrending story of King Downing, a black man who was briefly detained at Logan in October. When MassPort troopers at the airport asked for Downing's identification, he refused to produce it. That's the story that's making liberals around the country tear-up with disdain for airport safety: law-enforcement officers responsibly demanded ID from a man whom they deemed suspicious-looking, and the suspicious-looking man responded suspiciously.
At the risk of pointing out the blindingly obvious, King Downing is one of the most authentically stupid men in America. If there's one thing I've learned from hanging out in American airports since 9/11, it's that, as a passenger, you Do What You're Told. At New York's JFK last year, a large, belligerent security officer asked for my ID just before I boarded the airplane--which I concluded was based on the recent rash of terrorist attacks foisted on America by skinny WASP boys from California. Needless to say, I was not pleased. But, not in the mood for further inconvenience, I politely complied and got on the plane.
King was neither polite nor compliant. While he was whimpering about the Fourth Amendment--which, strangely, doesn't prohibit police officers from policing--Downing was stealing the valuable time of airport security personnel. Instead of thwarting terrorist attacks, potentially saving American lives, they had to endure a civics lesson from King Downing. (I would mention that tax-payers probably don't want their hard-earned money to be used for these purposes, but that would only be true in places where citizens actually dislike paying taxes.)
Fittingly, King is not merely a concerned citizen. He's no hero of the people. He's the ACLU's national coordinator against racial-profiling. Literally a professional activist, spewing legalistic illogic is his essence. By pretending to be offended, he's made himself the toast of the anti-war left, and it's all at the expense of your safety.
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