Religious Profiling

A t-shirt with Arabic script? 10 dollars. TSA costing taxpayers 240,000 dollars because of its ignorance? Well, 240,000 dollars. Government ineptitude in action? Timeless.

I wish the article mentioned the name of the attorneys handling the case [Update: according to the ACLU's website, the attorneys were Aden Fine, Reginald Shuford, Dennis Parker, Director of the ACLU Racial Justice Program, and Palyn Hung of the NYCLU]. Raed Jarrar was the plaintiff.

I was laughing at the TSA's stupidity until this line: "Last week, nine Muslims, including three children, were ordered off a domestic US flight after passengers heard what they believed were suspicious remarks about security...[E]ight of them [were] US citizens, were cleared by the FBI, [but] they were reportedly still barred from the AirTran flight."

"If the pilot is uncomfortable with someone flying on their plane, that's their decision," said Christopher White, a federal Transportation Security Administration spokesman. Is the TSA serious? Under their logic, if you pay for a ticket, and you say something the driver/pilot doesn't like, or you just happen to look at him the wrong way, s/he has the complete discretion to kick you off. Sounds like another lawsuit is in order.

Update: here's a link to more information, including a neat vid:

http://www.aclu.org/freespeech/gen/jarrar.html

Hat tip to Political Colors for the link.