Obviously, the airline security people are bending over backwards to avoid over-broad profiling, hence many complaints about little old ladies and kids taking their sneakers off (mine had to.) There must be a middle ground, but I don't think it's feasible for largely untrained security people.

Now, an experienced cop on the street develops a "radar" that helps tell him if someone is up to no good. What car is someone driving? What does he look like? Has he been around before? Is he acting oddly in some way? And many other intangibles that put his antenna up. Of course, if he's a good cop he's not going to haul a guy up onto the car hood just on this basis. But his eyes are open.

It would be cool if every security person at an airport had twenty years of experience working with and spotting terrorists in the field, but that's not the case, so we have to take it to the lowest common denominator. Off with the shoes, Granny.

Of course, if we had any sense, we'd have trained pilots with guns in the cockpit by now, but I guess that would be too easy. Incidentally, that was one of the first times I was disappointed with how Bush handled something.