As TB once pointed out, you don't go looking for white supremacist skinhead criminals in the black ghetto, and you don't stop blacks at random on the street when looking for KKK lynch mob suspects.

For me, it is not unreasonable to take a closer look at people who are of obvious middle eastern appearance or wearing traditional Muslim garb. The fact that we feel leery about doing this is we know most, if not all those we'll stop are innocent, and we are programmed as Americans to not look kindly on profiling because it violates certain assumptions of "innocent til proven guilty" that go back for centuries in English Common Law. Hell, we get pissed off when we have to empty our pockets and take off our shoes at airports, which is not unreasonable by any means.

I myself was once stopped and strip-searched twice, boarding in Tampa and again changing planes in Atlanta, when returning from Puerto Rico to Tennessee. In those days, they were looking for Cuban hijackers, and I fit the profile (I bought one-way tickets months ahead of time, and made an overnight stop in Florida). I understood why it happened, and I cut them a little slack. (Besides, they missed the two doobies I had stashed in my pack of Marlboros). In wartime, you assume your mail will be opened.

But "that author's" point had nothing to do with stop and search procedures and guidelines, and I think you know that. Its all about hate, and as you point out, using that hate to do a little rabble-rousing for purposes that have nothing to do with protecting the airways.