Politics: J'accuse!

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Not Me
I don't think that is what happened at the FBI pre-9/11. It wasn't the sole factor. There was plenty of other information to back-up investigating the Arabs in flying school. Yet the fact that they were concentrating on Arabs worried the FBI that it would be perceived as racial profiling.

You keep saying this, but you don't want to admit the possibility that the FBI is blowing smoke to cover its ass.

[Skeks in the city]

Originally posted by Shape Shifter

http://www.lawtalkers.com/forums/sho...9041#post79041

I see, Bilmore made the same mistake as Dubya, and confused Iraq for the beehive Iran is.

[ltl/fb]

Originally posted by Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)
Because the AMT's not indexed for inflation. That is, the income thresholds remain the same, as does the AMT standard deduction. In comparison, on regular income tax both are indexed to inflation. And you pay the higher of the two. So, a greater number of people are dragged in each year. As with anything, it's a normalized distribution and we had been on the skinny tail for a while. Now we've hit the meat of the middle.

More on the issue:

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine...0001_mz001.htm

This is SO HOT. And I'm kinda not kidding.

[Skeks in the city]

Originally posted by Not Bob

Singling out a dark-skinned passenger without paying attention to other factors that may be relevant (where is she from? how did he pay for his ticket? did they check bags?) just seems like an ineffective anti-terrorism tactic.

And will our grandchildren have the same reaction to this sort of thing as we now have to Japanese internment camps? Someone (burger?) pointed out the Korematsu decision already. The same arguments about group suspiscion were made in the 1940s, too.

You can't honestly compare the burden of singling out passengers for extra scrutiny and internment camps. Singling out passengers for extra scrutiny is a minor nuisance; it's not like they're shipped out to Cuba.

[Skeks in the city]

Originally posted by Atticus Grinch

ACLU's position is not as absurd as we're making it out to be. Rather, it smells a bit like the pretty standard totality of the circumstances probable cause analysis with which we're familiar.

The ACLU position is absurd. If the police are proceeding in a reasonable fashion, race is a fine criteria. If a witness said a black member of a movie audience garroted another member of the audience, and there are only two blacks in the audience, it's fucking stupid not to scrutinize the two blacks simply because they're black.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Atticus Grinch
No, I didn't miss them. I just wasn't interested in them, because I found them unsurprising. It's always wisest to get the oxen vote in between gorings, if you're running on a pro-goring platform.

those polls changed with time, and with how the question was phrased.

to concentrate only on apparent Islamic background is dumb because it gives the reid/lindh 's of the world some rope. To harass every Islamic person is stupid because we would allienate those who MUST be our friends.

we've eliminated the stupid "random" searches, hopefully because we've done something more valuable.

[Atticus Grinch]

Originally posted by Skeks in the city
The ACLU position is absurd. If the police are proceeding in a reasonable fashion, race is a fine criteria. If a witness said a black member of a movie audience garroted another member of the audience, and there are only two blacks in the audience, it's fucking stupid not to scrutinize the two blacks simply because they're black.

Because they are present at the scene of the crime and fit a description. Still permissible under the ACLU rule, I'd say. On the other hand, what about approaching 200 black men in a town of 60,000 and suggesting they are "potential suspects" in some unsolved rapes and should submit to DNA testing to clear themselves? Problematic. Too easy to resort to it every time a black man commits a crime. Hell, too easy to do it just to clear all rape cases in which the suspect is black. The white people in town go their entire lives without talking to the police, but if you're black, you have to be ruled out as a suspect.

[Not Me]

Originally posted by Tyrone_Slothrop
You keep saying this, but you don't want to admit the possibility that the FBI is blowing smoke to cover its ass.

I don't know if the FBI is blowing smoke to cover its ass. Do you know something I don't know about this? Please share if you do.

[Not Me]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
to concentrate only on apparent Islamic background is dumb because it gives the reid/lindh 's of the world some rope.

Reid was a British muslim who traveled to countries such as Egypt, Pakistan, and possibly Afghanistan. He worshipped at the same Mosque as Moussaoui once did. A mosque that is considered moderate.

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
To harass every Islamic person is stupid because we would allienate those who MUST be our friends.

Who said anything about harassing anyone.

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
we've eliminated the stupid "random" searches, hopefully because we've done something more valuable.

Who said anything about random searches.

[Not Me]

She needs to be under oath testifying before the fucking 9/11 commission, not on the commission.

Get her the fuck off the commission and before the commission under oath. Let her explain why she did what she did!

She was so fucking concerned about the appearance of impropriety when she set up the wall. Funny, she isn't concerned about the appearance of impropriety now that she is on the 9/11 commission.

Vomit.

[bilmore]

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Not Me
She needs to be under oath testifying before the fucking 9/11 commission, not on the commission.

Get her the fuck off the commission and before the commission under oath. Let her explain why she did what she did!

She was so fucking concerned about the appearance of impropriety when she set up the wall. Funny, she isn't concerned about the appearance of impropriety now that she is on the 9/11 commission.

Vomit.

Try to explain in your own words why you think this.

[Bad_Rich_Chic]

Originally posted by Not Me
Reid was a British muslim who traveled to countries such as Egypt, Pakistan, and possibly Afghanistan. He worshipped at the same Mosque as Moussaoui once did. A mosque that is considered moderate.

FWIW, he also was stopped from boarding a plane in Paris because he triggered their "don't let this fucker get on a plane" filters/profile. (He just wasn't stopped again when he came back the next day - serious fuck up on the part of the French.) The factors in the filter/profile that caught him did not include either ethnicity or religion.

Often Reid gets described as "British" or "British muslim" in the "anti-profiling" arguments by way of mildly implying that he is a white guy like Lindh, when he is of mixed racial background. His father is Jamaican and, for some reason I can't verify with google, I was under the impression that "Jamaican" in his case meant "from Jamaica but of Sri Lankan descent." (I firmly believe I actually saw this somewhere because I can't believe I would come up with Sri Lankan on my own.)

In any event, Reid doesn't strike me as a particularly good example of the "profiling arabs wouldn't have caught this one" argument, because I, frankly, thought he was a Briton of Pakistani descent on seeing his mug shot. (Actually, in all honesty I presumed he was likely of Pakistani descent, nwst his Scotish name, from hearing he was British in the first instance.) (Yes, I know, Pakistanis are not arab, but for purposes of this discussion I think we all know that "arab muslim" is usually short hand for "the brown or tan ones but not really the black ones or the asian ones.") With French demographics being what they are, the French are also unlikely to think that UK nationality mightn't also mean "nutjob radical muslim west-hating terrorist bomber." Everyone over there is very aware that Brits ain't necessarily lily white Anglicans anymore.

BR(no position in the discussion, really, just thought I'd throw that out there)C

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Bad_Rich_Chic
In any event, Reid doesn't strike me as a particularly good example of the "profiling arabs wouldn't have caught this one" argument, because I, frankly, thought he was a Briton of Pakistani descent on seeing his mug shot. (Actually, in all honesty I presumed he was likely of Pakistani descent, nwst his Scotish name, from hearing he was British in the first instance.) (Yes, I know, Pakistanis are not arab, but for purposes of this discussion I think we all know that "arab muslim" is usually short hand for "the brown or tan ones but not really the black ones or the asian ones.") With French demographics being what they are, the French are also unlikely to think that UK nationality mightn't also mean "nutjob radical muslim west-hating terrorist bomber." Everyone over there is very aware that Brits ain't necessarily lily white Anglicans anymore.

BR(no position in the discussion, really, just thought I'd throw that out there)C

Reid also could have cleaned up, shaved etc. He looked like a nutjob of one sort or another. Certainly a more rational (I know) bomber would try and look less the part.

Mentioning him is really saying a convert (I think he was) to Islam from a place where you'd not expect one, looking like Lindh (or the UK equivalent) on the day he showed in court, not when caught in afghanistan.

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
Reid also could have cleaned up, shaved etc. He looked like a nutjob of one sort or another. Certainly a more rational (I know) bomber would try and look less the part.

Mentioning him is really saying a convert (I think he was) to Islam from a place where you'd not expect one, looking like Lindh (or the UK equivalent) on the day he showed in court, not when caught in afghanistan.

My memory is fading. Who was it that spoke of always carrying their own bomb onto airplanes as a safety measure, because the chance of there being TWO bombs on one airplane was very low?