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U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-NY, is once again attempting to do an end run to the right of any and all potential Republican opponents she might face for the presidency in 2008. Of course, when you are vying to be the first female president, it never hurts to appear as tough as possible on national security issues, either.

Hillary says she will join with a fellow Democrat, New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez, in sponsoring legislation that would ban companies owned or controlled by foreign governments from acquiring U.S. port operations. One would not imagine that such legislation would be necessary in this post-9/11 world, but apparently it is, because a British-owned company called P&O, currently operating ports in New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Florida and Louisiana, is being sold to an entity known as Dubai Ports World, which is willing to pony up $6.8 billion for the privilege.

Oh, by the way, Dubai Ports World is backed by the United Arab Emirates.

Let me be clear. I believe that it is ridiculous to have any foreign government, even a loyal ally like Great Britain, controlling our ports, especially in the middle of a war on terror. In fact, I think the specter of foreign-operated seaports is one more example of the Bush Administration's failure to secure our borders. Hillary Clinton's political motives notwithstanding, she is right to look askance at the specific prospect of an Arab government having that authority. However, what she is proposing is nothing less than racial, ethnic and religious profiling on a macro level.

This begs the question: if it is good at the ports, why not at the airports?

If it is right (and I believe that it is) to say to United Arab Emirates, which claims to be our ally in the war on terror, that they cannot be trusted with our national security, then why is it wrong to use the same logic when screening those who try to board our commercial aircraft? After all, it was Arabs on board American commercial aircraft that savagely attacked the United States on 9/11. So why do we continue to randomly search the luggage and the persons of little old ladies and blond-haired, blue eyed Scandinavians as if they were as suspect as those who look like Mohammed Atta? It is the same sort of dangerous reasoning that says we should stop monitoring phone calls and e-mails of people inside the United States who are communicating with Osama bin Laden because we might happen to listen in on those who are not. Thankfully, the Bush Administration hasn't bought into that twisted thinking.

Hillary Clinton appears to be so confident of her invincibility in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination that she is courting the middle while ignoring the Left. Oh, sure, she will occasionally throw her base a bone, as she did in her half-hearted attack on Dick Cheney after his hunting accident. But having consistently supported the war in Iraq in order to bolster her moderate, tough-gal image, she is already in trouble with a major segment of the radical anti-war, anti-gun, anti-family, anti-capitalist, anti-American base of the Democratic Party. These are the voters who will decide the fate of those who hope to be their 2008 presidential nominee. A common sense idea like micro profiling could hurt her in the Democratic primaries, even as it would help her in the general election.

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