Rick Santorum Claims He Supports TSA Using Ethnic And Religious Profiling Of Younger Muslim Males

One of the most devout Christians in the GOP field endorsed singling out Muslims for extra screening by the Transportation Security Administration while the only African-American candidate called for racial profiling by another name.

"Obviously, Muslims would be someone you look at, absolutely," said former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum. "The radical Muslims are the people committing these crimes, by and large, with younger males" also deserving of more scrutiny at airport checkpoints.

Herman Cain said he was in favor of "targeted identification," another way of saying some people look more suspicious than others. "If you take a look at the people who have tried to kill us it would be easy to identify what that profile looks like." But when moderator Wolf Blitzer suggested that focusing on one sort of person would be like sngling out Christians or Jews, Cain rejected the premise as "simplifying."

Rep. Ron Paul, as is wont in these debates, differed from his rivals. After Santorum noted that Muslims would be "your best candidates" for extra screening, the Texas congressman said, "What if they look like Timothy McVeigh?" referring to the white Christian ex-soldier convicted in 1995's Oklahoma City bombing.

"That's digging a hole for ourselves," Paul said.

Comments

[Stacy Ann Tucker]

02:47 PM on 01/09/2012

People just don't get it, do they? Besides the fact that it is illegal to search someone based on ethnicity or religion because of a little thing we call the Bill of Rights, it wouldn't work. Arabs aren't even the predominant ethnicity in the Muslim world: Indonesia is. There are Muslims of every ethnicity on earth, including blond-haired, blue-eyed Anglos. You gonna focus all your attention on the Libyan medical student named Mohammed while a Swedish convert named Helga sneaks by with a bomb in her purse?

[jimbobre]

02:31 PM on 12/26/2011

As an African American man, who has suffered "racial profiling" in the 1960s and 1970s, I wish we'd stop using that, term. What still goes on for young black and Hispanic males, what Rick Santorum and other conservatives are proposing for muslims, is a GENERAL WARRANT. General Warrants have been used for centuries as a political tool to harrass, intimidate and control specific groups. The basis of a general warrant is that status - race, religion, politiccal affilaition - rather than actions are the cause for suspicion and arrest.

Santorum and others are offering the harrassment of muslims, just because they are muslims, as succor to those Americans who are frightened of all muslims.

What they propose has nothing to do with real police activity, which should create profiles of those, muslims included, most likely to do us harm.

[vidian6]

06:48 AM on 12/18/2011

This is not surprising. He's playing to an audience of bigots, what would you expect.

[Ian Gord]

11:36 AM on 11/29/2011

The caption for the video, "Newt Gingrich in the Crosshairs at the Next Republican Debate." should be getting more complaints for the violent imagery.

[bob riversmith]

07:08 PM on 11/28/2011

Rick Santorum is a stupid man,

[alabama lawyer]

05:39 PM on 11/28/2011

Santorum is a very simple man.

[freedom1947]

07:37 PM on 11/28/2011

Giving him to much credit

[hecatr]

11:28 AM on 11/28/2011

Rick Santorum is making an argument for common sense. The majority of airborne terrorist suspects are young, foreign-born, middle-to-upper-class, Muslim males.

[dahile00]

12:39 PM on 12/01/2011

If he's making an argument on common sense, that's an accident. "Common sense", as you've defined it, merely goes hand-in-hand with Dominionist cultural warfare.

[jimbobre]

02:33 PM on 12/26/2011

Santorum is proposing a general warrant, which has nothing to do with common sense. It's a political move to make people like you feel secure.

[am123]

11:35 PM on 11/27/2011

Instead of groping grandma or molesting little tykes at the airport, why not focus upon those who have the motivation and mindset to engage in a suicide mission and kill a bunch of infidels? Put it this way, if Al Qaeda were to advertise a job listing for someone to blow up a plane full of infidels and as a reward, they would gain for themselves a place in paradise with 72 virgins, who would apply for such a job? Would it be a blue-haired 80 year old woman, little 5 year old Johnnie with a toy gun, or a young Muslim male?

[Zork4]

01:57 AM on 11/28/2011

How do you tell if the young male is Muslim? Using the criterion 'vaguely Arab-looking' will ensnare some secular Jews and will miss the hundreds of millions of Muslim Indonesians.

Freedom entails risk, you can't have safety and freedom.

[contrarywise]

02:36 PM on 11/27/2011

Exactly how are they supposed to identify Muslims? Are we going to have to I.D. our religion on our driver's licences? He obviously didn't think this thing through....big surprise.

My new insight: it is a waste of time trying to reason with "people of faith" for the simple reason that they don't value reason and logic. (They will attempt to use it to justify their faith, but such attempts are generally pathetic. Like the woman who wrote my local paper to say that because, according to her, atheists "spend their whole lives trying to disprove the existence of God," they are thus proving the existence of God. Huh?)

[bob riversmith]

07:10 PM on 11/28/2011

"Exactly how are they supposed to identify Muslims?"

Their funny hats.

[fskk]

07:09 PM on 04/05/2012

Sikhs also wear those "funny hats". Just because they wear "funny hats" does not make them Muslim

[Olethea]

01:49 PM on 11/26/2011

Santorum is a very disturbed man. I think he's struggling with his religion and his sexuality, and and does not have the emotional maturity to be a realistic candidate.

I'm not sure I'd trust him to wash my car, either.

[Hillbilly49]

10:28 AM on 11/26/2011

"Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful. "


— Seneca

[justkeepswimming]

07:02 PM on 11/25/2011

Guess what Santorum: there are Muslims working for TSA. We have Muslim elected officials. There are Muslim soldiers, firefighters, police, doctors, lawyers, nurses, teachers... hey, those terrorists can't get away from us now!

[ThinkCreeps]

04:25 AM on 11/26/2011

You must not have seen Rick's plans for the great purge of 2013.

[guitarfitch]

03:47 PM on 11/25/2011

Make it fair and profile everyone.

[Quai DOrsay]

11:48 AM on 11/25/2011

Well I m kinda scared of Christians ... Let's profile them first starting by Rickie boy... and this man can be our president ...hmmmm

[The Green Knight]

12:14 PM on 11/25/2011

You're out in left field. When you get serious, you might get serious consideration of your argument.

[Quai DOrsay]

12:45 PM on 11/25/2011

When you will start making sense why they should profile only muslims get back to me

[ThinkCreeps]

04:26 AM on 11/26/2011

He's too insubstantial and two-dimensional to profile.

[tmccmn]

07:27 AM on 11/25/2011

If we pay extra attention to Muslims in the name of improving airline security, I think in fairness, we also need to pay extra attention to Catholics in the name of reducing child abuse.

[cochise59]

09:58 AM on 01/09/2012

seems fair. i certainly wouldn't send my kid to catholic church. but not b/c of molestation risks. the israeli's profile at airports. it makes perfect sense. if you see a muslm who is dressed in muslim garb (the hat, burka, while sheet, long beard mostache, etc, put 'em thru screening.