Flying Blind
According to Michael Smerconish the U.S. government's airport security policy does not make common sense. If Muhammad Atta and the four of his friends who crashed American Airlines Flight 11 into the North Tower of the World Trade Center showed up to board a flight, airline security personnel, even after 9/11, could not pull them out of the boarding line to ask them a single question. Why can't the airlines pull them out? Precisely because they resemble Atta and his terrorist gang. They are young Muslim men of Middle East descent.
Now, under U.S. law, the airlines have the duty to refuse to carry any person or thing that might pose a danger to the safety of a flight. And the Federal Aviation Act gives the plane Captain wide discretion to yank people or cargo off a flight provided only the Captain's exercise of his discretion is not arbitrary or capricious. But the way the law is written is not the way it is enforced under the upside down policy of political correctness imposed by Department of Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta.
The DOT claims to apply a "but for" test, meaning that if there are any other factors besides race, religion, sex, age, or national origin that arouse suspicion it is okay for the airlines to send a passenger to secondary screening. But in reality, the DOT sues the airlines even when those additional factors like a one-way ticket paid for in cash or concerns expressed by a Federal Air Marshall directly to the pilot are present. Since 9/11, the DOT has forced Continental, Delta, United, and American airlines to pay millions in fines for the 1 in 10 million passengers who has complained even when that passenger was questioned for suspicious factors other than ethnicity. The way the law is applied, if the airlines do stop someone who resembles the 9/11 terrorists they are guaranteed to get sued no matter what other circumstances are present.
Mineta's political correctness was...
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