Many conservatives like to say that racial profiling is a no-brainer because everybody knows that the terrorists are all Muslims from the Middle East with brown skin. For example, this asshole, Republican candidate Dan Fanelli:
You absolutely have to see this TV ad that a House GOP candidate hoping to take on Dem Rep. Alan Grayson (D) has run in Florida. It not only supports racial profiling, but urges it as a matter of policy -- and even suggests explicitly that darker people are more likely to be terrorists.
In an interview, the candidate, Naval and airline pilot Dan Fanelli, insisted that the spot wasn't meant to suggest that those with darker skin are more inclined towards terror. Watch the spot for yourself:
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand why racial profiling is wrong and stupid. Even if it weren't for the Timothy McVeighs and Joseph Stacks of the world, even if it weren't for the idea that people shouldn't be targeted on the basis of their skin color, relying on racial profiling would still be like giving terrorists a guide on how to avoid being detected (just don't look like someone we're profiling for).
Imagine if authorities had used racial profiling on the Senagelese Muslim immigrant who first alerted police to the smoldering SUV in Times Square:
Aliou Niasse, a Senagalese Muslim immigrant who works as a photograph vendor on Times Square, was the first to bring the smoking car to the police’s attention
If Fanelli had been in charge, Niasse probably have been ignored, if not arrested, and the response to the ticking time bomb inside the SUV would have been delayed. That's not common sense, that's uncommonly dense. Fanelli is hateful. Moreover, he's an idiot. As Markos argues in his next book, people like Fanelli really are the American equivalent of the Taliban.