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Friday, December 23, 2016

But Was NSEERS Effective?

If a Moslem alien registry is potentially to be revived under President Trump, remember that President Obama only shut it down completely in 2011. And it didn't apply to Moslems who are American citizens. But it might not have even been effective.

I have no problem with screening people coming into our country to look for threats. This is our country. We have the absolute right to set the standards for coming in for any reason at all, including to protect our people.

What I really wonder about is why I was scrutinized so closely when leaving America by our border police--complete with questions, identification checks, bags search, fingerprinting, and photographing.

I mean other than being so bad-ass dangerous looking with that obviously simmering very particular skill set that the Army taught me. (Ladies, email on the left.)

But I digress.

But was the NSEERS program for people already here successful? The article has the claim that no terrorism-related investigations were opened because of the program. Is that true?

The claim is not far-fetched, to me. Just as gun regulations tend just to be another layer of pains in the butt for lawful gun owners who not strangely enough tend to be the people who obey those laws rather than criminals who will ignore laws and rules regardless of how many there are.

So the idea that law-abiding Moslems were the only people picked up by this screening is no shock to me. Those who want to kill us because they are jihadis would just refuse to walk in the door and register. And how would the government find them?

Truly, employee time was probably wasted sitting at a desk reviewing the paperwork of Moslems clearly willing to have their life scrutinized for signs of jihadi infection, when those employees could have been looking for actual jihadis.

Maybe--perhaps--a one-time registration could be justified. But then leave the people willing to come in and register alone after that. Save the effort to finding those who don't register and if necessary, put them through repeat and regular scrutiny.

But I'm not convinced that a program like this is effective or needed. Yet I do defend the right to debate whether it is effective or needed without being dumped into a basket of deplorables just for asking if it might be needed or work.

And note that the head of those Code Pink hags is front and center in the photograph of concerned protesters. (And if you think I used an insulting term, well, I was trying to insult them. I have zero respect for those fools.)