No, in the opinion of the Court. Nice attempt to enter and derail the discussion, though.

Why stop or begin with airplanes? There are far greater risks for most all of us -- even the ones who live in Manhattan or the District.

Airplanes may be unique enivornments, but then again so are many cars, trains, boats, jet skis, wave runners, motorcycles, etc. So are homes. So are offices. So are streets. And so on.......

The elements of risk on a flight are not much greater than say on a helicopter or a motorcycle. Statistically that stands.

It is fundamentally anti-American to advocate discrimination based on ethnicity, religion, race, creed, national origin, sex and the like. You may wish it was otherwise, but history and law shows that those who advocate persecution (read "special treatment) based on such categories are not held in high esteem nor do they succeed (or even survive) at the end of the day.

Intolerant societies are ultimately self-undermining and/or self-destructive. In other words, they fail to endure.

Thanks for that. For a little background information, Michelle Malkin wishes she was Ann-the-Man Coulter and is considered right of Viet Dien (the man behind the so-called "USA PATRIOT" Act). So keep that in mind.

Your statement of the "law" is overly broad. IMO. I'll see if I can address it later when I've got some time. In the meantime, continue with the PC-fest.

Agreed. She should go into writing a kindergarden version of 3rd-rate Tom Clancy-wannabe novels.

"Overly broad"? Tell that to the courts and to the general counsels for most all government agencies. In their opinions, your opinion would not be accepted and would be considered a crime worthy of punishment on more than one occassion.

Are you saying that the bigotry-fest and fear-fest is losing out to the PC-fest, common sense-fest and the best of America/American values-fest as well?

Apparently, the alleged FAM spokesman in BICE/DHS cited in a "blog" (real worthy newsource that blogs really are ) is not willing to validate these Jacobsen "facts". Surprising? Not.

Perhaps Malkin and Jacobsen need to go back to the drawing board.

Jacobsen's story is made up and designed to be propaganda. The story is just sprinkled with a few facts here and there and a lot of filler junk based on her own fears and prejudices which she then conveyed to enough others that she disrupted and distracted law enforcement resources even while the FAMs on board felt no need to take action themselves. That is quite telling and goes to the credit of the FAMs on board the flight.

If this story is credible (which is very much in doubt), then it is apparent that the flight attendants on board the flight escalated the situation to alert LEOs on the ground. That's why they were allegedly waiting to pick up the people. We don't wnat to let that little item get in the way of the fear-fest, now do we?

As far as I was aware, we were talking about the security screenings in general - not about special screenings for specific ethnic groups, etc.

I think there is some miscommunication going on here - both you and Spiff seemed to think I was advocating screening based on race/ethnicity. That's far from what I was trying to convey.

No...I meant: did the FA's check the lavatory bins for any suspicious items? Did they ask the man loitering in the first class galley to take his seat (if he was, indeed, a member of this group and not a FAM)? Did they make attempts to have those standing in the aisles, especially while on approach into LAX, take their seats? Etc, etc, etc. Clearly they conveyed their concerns to the cockpit and had law enforcement meet the aircraft...but did they do anything inflight in an attempt to control the situation?

Like I said...we don't have a behind-the-scenes account of a 'terrorist research flight'. We have one passenger's perspective, given a limited amount of information, on the situation. I suspect there is more to this story than we have been given in this article.

I too am curious and think there is more to this story -- meaning more questions to be asked -- than a certain Mrs. Jacobsen has let us know.

Downside of fear-fest: Somebody gets their feelings hurt.

Downside of PC-fest: Thousands of innocent U.S. citizens are slaughtered.

Now tell me about common sense.

True, at the beginning. Closer to the mid-term, someone will experience what Jews in Germany or what Armenians in/around the Ottoman territories did. And then we will get a bunch of citizens killed, interned or forced into refugee status for the same reasons as Jews and Armenians in the last century. That reason being the fear-fest lovers.

Common sense does not say that a "PC-fest" results in thousands of innocent U.S. citizens slaughtered. I have yet to have an example of where modern American "PCness" has actually resulted in the direct slaughter of thousands of US citizens? Can you show me one historical example of thousands of US citizens slaughtered because of such a "PC-fest"?

Tightening borders is not un-PC.

It's much bigger than that.

When people can be snatched and questioned without probable cause, the fabric of American society is gone. Thousands or even millions of deaths cannot replace that fabric.

Why did we go to war so many times after our independence from Britain? To prevent the very thing that you advocate, whether it was currently occuring on our soil, or whether we feared it would spread to our soil.