Guest post by Philip Hodges (originally posted at Eagle Rising)

HBO’s Real Time host Bill Maher – someone not often inclined to side with Donald Trump – said that Trump is right about profiling in the context of how to deal with terrorism. Here’s what he said:

“He is for profiling, that’s what he said. But he said we should do it the way Israel does. And, like, every once in while Donald Trump says something right. Because we profile already, we just do it stupidly. All police work is profiling. Discrimination does not mean prejudice; discrimination means telling un-like things apart…

“What they do is they hire really smart people. This is not the TSA, which is just guys giggling at your balls when they’re looking — a screener. If we would pay people $100,000 to do this job, we could get the kind of people who do it in Israel.

“And, again, we’re just talking about a few questions. We’re not talking about the rubber hose or sending you to a black site. I mean, I don’t think this is too much of a sacrifice to ask.”

He’s definitely right about the TSA. Their scanners and pat-down agents don’t do anything to prevent terrorism. Not only has the TSA caught zero terrorists and stopped zero terrorist attacks, they have a 95% failure rate. That means, that they’ll catch contraband roughly 5% of the time. The rest of the time, it gets through. It’s a wonder that we haven’t dealt with another 9/11-style attack over the past 15 years. How does an institution with such an abysmal track record even exist? (Dumb question, I know…it’s government, so of course, it’s going to be nothing but expensive and ineffective.)

Crossposted from Eagle Rising