Jihad Jane Case Shows Why Profiling Won't Work

On the subject of those who have been clamoring for racial-ethnic-religious profiling, Eugene Robinson would like to direct everyone's attention to the case of Jihad Jane. Colleen LaRose is a "blond, blue-eyed, middle-aged white woman living unremarkably in a small town 50 miles from Philadelphia, where neighbors say they often heard her talking to her cats," he writes for the Washington Post. "What profile would have picked her out of the crowd?"

The solution obviously isn't to have the FBI maintain a database of "small-town cat ladies"—or any other database for that matter. Ethnic profile is both discriminatory and dangerous. "Terrorists and would-be terrorists don't come from central casting," writes Robinson. "There has to be equal-opportunity scrutiny. There's a reason all of us have to take our shoes off at the airport."
(More jihad stories.)