The TSA's Mission Creep
Virginia Postrel is exactly right in her assessment of the TSA's mission creep.

She blogged the NYT story by Michael S. Schmidt and Eric Lichtblau about racial profiling at Boston's Logan airport. No, they aren't targeting potential terrorists but blacks and Hispanics, especially those Miami-bound. An excerpt from the NYT piece:

At a meeting last month with T.S.A. officials, officers at Logan provided written complaints about profiling from 32 officers, some of whom wrote anonymously. Officers said managers' demands for high numbers of stops, searches and criminal referrals had led co-workers to target minorities in the belief that those stops were more likely to yield drugs, outstanding arrest warrants or immigration problems.

The practice has become so prevalent, some officers said, that Massachusetts State Police officials have asked why minority members appear to make up an overwhelming number of the cases that the airport refers to them.

"The behavior detection program is no longer a behavior-based program, but it is a racial profiling program," one officer wrote in an anonymous complaint obtained by The Times.

Postrel is right on with her remark about these civil liberties-violating searches:

The TSA has no business looking for drugs, outstanding arrest warrants, or immigration problems unless it has serious reason to believe that the person involved poses a serious threat to air safety. If it is going to serve as an extension of every other sort of law enforcement, then its searches should be subject to the same requirements for probable cause, which would allow almost everyone to travel without submitting to TSA examination.

A few wise points from the comments at the NYT:

jbaker, saint louis: There are a number of people who believe that if you have done nothing wrong you have nothing to hide, but with our expansive criminal code on any given day anyone could have violated the law. Just how many of our rights are we required to surrender on the altars of safety and security?

wsschaillcom, florida: As many of us have suspected for some time, the TSA is not in the business of protecting us from terrorists but rather of trying to catch drug users and other common criminals. It's 'stop and frisk' on a national scale.

via Instapundit