If I Were a Republican Candidate for President...

If I were a contender for the Republican nomination for president, I'd be all over the recent decision by a Clinton-appointed judge to allow the "Flying Imams" suit to go forward. To refresh your memory, the Flying Imams were a group of six bearded, robed Muslims who scared the crap out of passengers and crew members as they boarded a US Airways flight in Minneapolis (note that this was about a month before Senator Larry Craig was playing footsie with an undercover cop in that airport's men's room, so he's off the hook in this case). So what happened?

According to a police report, the men were arrested because three had one-way tickets and no checked baggage; most had requested seat belt extensions; a passenger reported that they had prayed "very loudly" before the flight and criticized U.S. involvement with Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, and they were seated widely throughout the aircraft.

But according to Clinton appointee Judge Ann Montgomery, "it is dubious that these facts would lead a reasonable person to conclude that plaintiffs were about to interfere with the crew of Flight 300." That Bill Clinton was one amazing president - how could he have managed to appoint a judge who not only is (presumably) expert in the law but whose judgment of passenger dangers exceeds that of highly experienced security and airline crews?

To be fair, this ruling has not generated much coverage - a Google News search on "imams lawsuit" brings back a whopping 42 hits. But if you combine that string with the names of the major Republican candidates, you get absolutely nothing. Why is that? If I were one of these candidates, here's the statement I would release:

We sometimes forget how important our choice for President can be, and how the effects of making the wrong choice lingers long after that mistake has left office. There are few things presidents do that are more important than who they decide to put on our courts. Just this past week, Bill Clinton has continued to make us less safe by his bad choices for federal judgeships. A Clinton-appointee has questioned the seasoned judgment of a professional flight crew and their worried passengers concerned over the suspicious behavior of a group of muslim men. She is allowing these Imams to proceed with a lawsuit against the airport and airline who were only trying to keep their passengers safe. She claims that no reasonable person could have found their behavior suspicious, which is blatantly false because the pilot himself found the behavior suspicious, and if our pilots are not "reasonable" people, we are all in really big trouble. Now all our safety is endangered if flight crews and airport security must now fear lawsuits should their on-the-spot judgment later be questioned by some liberal judge in our federal courts. I feel bad that these apparently-innocent Muslim men missed their flight. But do we so easily forget that it was 19 Muslim men who not so long ago hijacked 4 jets on 9/11/2001 and murdered 3000 of our fellow citizens? Or that Islamic terrorists continue to kill and maim thousands in bombing attacks across the globe? I welcome our Islamic brethren in this country, and pledge my support and respect, but is it too much to ask that they in turn show a little patience and understanding of their fellow Americans' concerns?

I pledge that as your president I will put safety first in our airport security, and I will appoint to the courts men and women who respect the concerns of our passengers and the judgment of those we have charged with protecting our lives.

I'm sure a profession speech-writer could polish that up a bit, but any Republican candidate with the balls to come out with a statement like this could be assured of walking away with the nomination, and I'm pretty sure the general election itself. Yet no one is even willing to try? Pretty strange.

Related: An editorial at Investors Business Daily seems to be the only mainstream recognition of this particular bit of lunacy.