Today's edition of The Washington Post has an excellent opinion piece written by Omar Khan on his unfortuate experiences with airport security screeners. Khan makes a compelling case for abandoning security mechanisms that rely exclusively on common first and last names. Khan notes:

I was warned to expect to spend two to three hours each time attempting to get back into the country of which I am a legal resident. This struck me as insane. How are we made safer by repeated security checks because of an indiscriminate emphasis on generic names?

The entire article is worth a read. Aside from the substance of the essay, it is significant that The Washington Post, a widely-circulated and well-respected publication, printed an article on a form of racial profiling as a means of making our airports -- and nation -- safer.