Dan Fanelli, a “former Navy and commercial airline pilot” who is competing in the GOP congressional primary for the chance to run against Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) in the general election, has begun airing a new ad in which he seems to endorse racial profiling of darker-skinned Americans to detect terrorists. Fanelli implies that all terrorists look alike.

In the ad, Fanelli stands in front of an elderly white man dressed in a business suit and asks, “Does this look like a terrorist?” He then holds out his hands to his other side and a burly, swarthy-skinned man emerges, prompting Fanelli to say, “Or this?” The candidate continues, “It’s time to stop this political correctness and the invasion of our privacy. Let’s face it, if the good looking rich guy without much hair was flying airplanes into the twin towers, I’d have no problem being pulled out of line at the airport.” Watch it:

The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent asked Fanelli if “the message of the spot was that darker people are more likely to be terrorists.” Sargent writes that Fanelli “said it wasn’t, claiming that the ad’s point was that people from countries like Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Syria ‘require a higher level of security.’”

While Fanelli’s suggestion of placing special security emphasis on people who look a certain way or come only from certain countries is offensive, it’s also wildly ineffective in actually combating terrorism. A study released last year by the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science conducted a mathematical analysis to compare random screenings to racial profiling. It found that racial profiling is “no more effective” than using the random method in detecting terrorists.

Indeed, terrorists come in all shapes, sizes, and colors, and do not simply belong to one religion, ethnicity, or nationality. The “shoe bomber,” Richard Reid, was Jamaican and British. Al Qaeda recruit Adam Pearlman was a white American. Germaine Lindsay, one of London’s 7/7 bombers, was Afro-Caribbean. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was a black African.

As ThinkProgress noted yesterday, after alleged Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad was arrested late Monday at JFK International Airport, conservatives began following the political playbook they used to criticize the Obama administration’s handling of the attempted Christmas day bombing: complaining that authorities might read him his Miranda rights. “Don’t give this guy his Miranda rights until we find out what it’s all about,” said Sen. John McCain (R-AZ).

McCain’s close ally, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), even suggested that Congress should create a process to strip “American citizens who choose to become affiliated with foreign terrorists” of their citizenship and, therefore, their Miranda rights. Lieberman explained to reporters that he believes “that any time we arrest somebody we suspect to be a terrorist the first thing that ought to happen with them is they ought to be interviewed without Miranda Rights being given to them”:

LIEBERMAN: My own feeling about this is that any time we arrest somebody we suspect to be a terrorist the first thing that ought to happen with them is they ought to be interviewed without Miranda Rights being given to them by law enforcement officials to extract from them every piece of information that might help us stop an ongoing terrorist threat. My own feeling is that anybody who we decide there is reasonable possibility that they’ve committed a terrorist act ought to be turned over to our military justice system because though it’s an unconventional war, they are prisoners of a war. A war that Islamic extremists declared against the United States, certainly, on 9/11/01. So, bottom line, I don’t believe somebody like Faisal Shahzad should receive Miranda rights. I don’t believe he’s entitled to them.

Shahzad, a naturalized U.S. citizen, did eventually have his rights read to him, but not until after he was questioned extensively under a “public safety exception” to the Miranda rule. Fox News’ Jamie Colby reported today that “a source on the Homeland Security Committee” told her that Shahzad was read his rights “nine and a half hours after questioning.” Watch it:

Colby added that she was told that once Shahzad was Mirandized, “he waved his right to counsel, he waved his right to an appearance.” Indeed, Deputy FBI director John Pistole said yesterday that Shahzad continued to cooperate after hearing his rights:

Shahzad was not immediately Mirandized after authorities yanked him off a Dubai-bound flight from New York Monday night. John Pistole, deputy FBI director, said Tuesday that agents interviewed him under the “public safety exception” to determine whether there was an imminent threat.

He was later read his rights and waived them, according to the White House. Officials have described the suspect as cooperative and talkative ever since.

“He was … cooperative and provided valuable intelligence and evidence. He was eventually transported to another location, mirandized and continued talking,” Pistole said.

So, despite conservative complaints, reading a U.S. citizen his Miranda rights has not impeded information-gathering. But this hasn’t stopped conservatives from complaining. Former Attorney General Michael Mukasey told Fox News that despite claims that Shahzad “kept spilling the beans, the question is how many beans he spilled.”