<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by sowalsky:
... that the decision by the Clinton administration to never use racial or religious factors in airport security was an enormous mistake (i.e. random screening does not serve any useful purpose).</font>
First, this was not a Clinton Administration decision.
Second, why limit the use of racial or religious factors to airport security? Let's say that we should audit European Americans at 10 times the rate of African Americans. After all, it would net bigger and more "threatening" tax cheats.
Why not set up check-points to screen Christian males whenever there is an incident of a woman being abused or assaulted? After all, Christian males are the majority of violent offenders in America.
The list goes on an on.
[By the way, I believe the only useful security for airports is comprehensive explosives screening, unidentifiable armed skymarshalls -- unknown to even the crew -- and validation that no harmful (chemical or otherwise) agents or automatic weapons get on board.]