The paranoid environment created by the 9/11 attacks has allowed for a myriad of civil rights infringements under the guise of national security. Airport security especially ratcheted up racial profiling, marking any Middle Eastern sign or symbol a suspicious target, particularly the turban. Even turbaned individuals with no affiliation with Islam or the Middle East, such as Sikh men, have become “a superficial and accessible proxy for the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks” and a “target of discriminatory conduct,” including employment discrimimation, harrassment, and violence.

But now, this long-permitted prejudice is creating diplomatic tension between the U.S. and India. Today, the Indian press reported on an incident last month in which Houston, Texas airport security officials detained Indian’s UN envoy Hardeep Puri in a holding room for 30 minutes because he was wearing a turban. As a Sikh, Puri is obliged to keep all hair intact and his head covered in public at all times. The turban symbolizes self-respect and piety — “touching of the head dress in public is not allowed” and can only be removed “in the most intimate of circumstances.”

However, as officials present during the incident told Turtle Bay, airport security officials ignored Puri’s religious requirements and long-standing protocol exempting dignitaries from such treatment and demanded to physically check his Turban themselves until Puri informed them that TSA regulations allow him to check himself:

Airport security agents in Austin pulled Singh aside into an enclosed glass holding room for questioning after he refused a request to remove his turban or allow inspectors to touch it, an Indian official who witnessed the incident told Turtle Bay. “He said no, you cannot check my turban,” according to the Indian official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “I won’t allow you to touch my turban.”

The Indian official said Singh offered to touch the turban himself and to allow the security agents to run a check of his hands for traces of explosives, but he said that one security official refused. Singh insisted that the security official had no right to check his turban, citing TSA regulations for searches of foreign diplomats. “Obviously you don’t know your own rules. Please check your rules,” he told the security agent, according to the Indian official. “The person insisted that he had to do it. He said, ‘Don’t tell me the rules.’”

The Indian official said that the security officials finally checked the security regulations and issued an apology to the Indian ambassador. He said he was unaware of whether his government had filed an official complaint with the United States over the issue.

This is the second incident in which a U.S. airport security gaffe has insulted the Indian government this month. Earlier, Mississippi airport officials created another diplomatic row when Indian ambassador Meera Shankar was picked out of a security line at an international airport in Mississippi and subjected to a pat-down simply because she was wearing a Sari. After the Indian government’s strong rebuke, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton and Mississippi’s Gov. Haley Barbour (R) both issued statements assuring Shankar that they will make sure such treatment does not happen in the future.

As for the Puri incident, the Indian Foreign Minister SM Krishna said today that they have “taken it up with the U.S authorities and the matter is at that stage.” Former Indian diplomats, however, have “reacted aggressively” to the incident, saying that “if Washington does not change its policy on searches, diplomats from the U.S. should also be ready to face such security in India.”

The Secret Service is investigating a bar in West Allis, Wisconsin after a bartender burned President Obama in effigy in front of a cheering crowd. A video obtained by local NBC affiliate TMJ4 shows a bartender at the Yester Years Pub and Grill burning a small figurine of Obama “with what looks like duct tape” wrapped around its neck. The crowd can be heard laughing and shouting in the background. Watch TMJ4′s report:

Jerry Ann Hamilton, the President of Milwaukee’s NAACP, was “outraged” by the incident and worried it could be racially motivated. She called the images “very offensive” and said she would push for a full investigation. The town’s mayor and local residents also expressed dismay. The Secret Service confirmed it was investigating, but would not comment further. (HT: Mediaite)

Yesterday, ret. Maj. Gen. Robert Harding said that he was withdrawing from consideration to become head of the Transportation Security Agency (TSA). The New York Times reports that Harding’s bid “unraveled after reports that his firm collected more federal money than it was entitled to for providing interrogators in Iraq.” “The president is disappointed in this outcome but remains confident in the solid team of professionals at TSA,” said a White House spokesman. Harding was Obama’s second nominee to lead TSA. The first choice, Erroll Southers, withdrew after being blocked by Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), who wanted to “prevent TSA workers from joining a labor union.” The White House has not yet announced a third choice, meaning that “the job is likely to remain unfilled for months to come.”

Today, the Senate Homeland Security Committee held a hearing on the failed Christmas Day bombing. One of the administration officials who testified was National Counterterrorism Center Director Michael Leiter. Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) asked whether anyone had been “held accountable” for the intelligence lapses, saying that the “facts” of what happened were “clear.” However, McCain’s summary distorted a couple of key facts. When Leiter tried to correct him, McCain became defensive and tried to accuse Leiter of avoiding his question:

McCAIN: I think everybody knows the facts of the Christmas bomber. A person buys a ticket with cash, one-way ticket. His father has already warned the CIA. The series of missteps have taken place, what were — led to this near tragedy. … It’s fairly clear the facts of what happened, isn’t it?

LEITER: Well, actually I think many of the facts are clear. I would correct the record on a couple of points. In fact, the fact is not that he bought a one-way ticket, he bought a round-trip ticket. The fact that he used cash, frankly, is in Africa, completely and utterly —

MCCAIN: That was in Copenhagen, not Africa.

LEITER: No, sir. I believe he bought —

MCCAIN: Did he have someone who facilitated — if you think — if you’re defending –

LEITER: No, sir –

MCCAIN: – that we shouldn’t have found — shouldn’t have been alerted to this individual, sir, then –

LEITER: Then I apologize.

Watch it:

Leiter didn’t need to apologize; he was just trying to get the correct facts on record. The accused Christmas Day bomber, Umar Abdulmutallab, did not have a one-way ticket, but rather paid $2,831 for a round-trip ticket from Nigeria to Detroit via Amsterdam. He “bought his ticket with cash in Ghana eight days before the flight departed Nigeria” — not in Copenhagen, as McCain claimed. (HT: TPMmuckraker)

Today, Erroll Southers, President Obama’s nominee to head the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), announced that he was withdrawing from consideration because “his nomination had become a lightning rod for those with a political agenda.” Indeed, Southers’ most vocal opponent was Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), who was blocking the highly qualified nominee “to prevent TSA workers from joining a labor union.” Following the failed Christmas Day bombing when it became increasingly clear how much the TSA needed a director, the right wing insisted on playing politics with Southers’ nomination. The White House said it “accepted Southers’ withdrawal with great sadness and continued to believe he would have made an excellent TSA administrator.” According to Foreign Policy, there are still 177 Obama nominees awaiting confirmation, and “dozens of those holds are directly affecting the agencies responsible for the United States’ security and foreign policy.”

As the Wonk Room’s Matt Duss has been pointing out, conservatives and hawks are falling all over themselves to hail the failed Christmas Day bombing as a “success.” “This was — this was an attack that didn’t succeed on the scale it was expected to but did succeed,” said Brit Hume on Fox News.

At the same time, conservatives seeking to exploit the attempted attack for political advantage have been contrasting Obama’s record on terrorism with President Bush’s, claiming that the last administration “had a 100 percent perfect track record.” On Fox News yesterday, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour declared that “after September 11, not one time did the terrorists who are trying to kill us and end our way of life, not one time were they able to attack the mainland United States.” Former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani claimed on Good Morning America today that “We had no domestic attacks under Bush.” Watch it:

Ignoring the irony of Rudy “noun, a verb, and 9/11” Giuliani claiming there were “no domestic attacks under Bush,” the logic of the conservative claim that the failed Christmas Day attack represents a mar on Obama’s record while Bush’s post-9/11 record was spotless reveals a stunning double standard. As many, including ThinkProgress, have pointed out, Umar Farouk Abdulmuttalab’s failed underwear bombing is nearly identical to Richard Reid’s failed shoe bombing in December 2001, but the conservatives attacking Obama for letting an attack occur on his watch don’t seem to count the shoe bombing as an attack on Bush’s watch.

This was perhaps best demonstrated by Las Vegas Journal Review publisher Sherman Frederick’s column claiming that “the two cases of domestic terrorism since 9/11″ both happened on Obama’s watch. The only way for this to be true is for Abdulmuttalab’s failed attack to count as a case of domestic terrorism while discounting Reid’s failed attack. Additionally, as Media Matters has repeatedly pointed out, several other domestic attacks did occur under Bush’s watch, such as the 2001 anthrax attacks and the 2002 attack against an El Al ticket counter at LAX.

[/update]

Last month, conservatives attempted to politicize the attempted terrorist attack on Christmas day by complaining that President Obama waited three days before publicly addressing it. “The President waits 72 hours before we hear from him, and it’s over 72 hours from the time of the incident to the time that the President spoke today,” said Karl Rove on Dec. 28, not noting that his old boss waited six days before commenting on the 2001 attempted shoe bombing.

But conservatives are now claiming that he waited 10 days to respond. On CNN’s Larry King Live last night, former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani claimed that Obama responded “10 days too late“:

GIULIANI: I think the president has to make a major correction in the way he is dealing with terrorism because I think he has mishandled the situation. First of all, it was 10 days too late. This is something you react to immediately, not 10 days later after your vacation. The president of the United States, when there is a potential massive attack on this country, which is what this guy was going to do, should have been on top of this immediately, not 10 days later, 11 days later, 12 days later.

When King pointed out that “President Bush took six days once in a similar incident,” Giuliani responded that “six days is less than 10″ and that he believed “that six days was before the September 11th attack.” King then clarified that “Bush waited six days on the shoe bomber,” to which Giuliani responded, “that’s correct.” Watch it:

The attempted shoe bombing by Richard Reid took place three months after September 11 on December 22, 2001. President Bush didn’t say a single word about the incident until a press conference six days later, where he simply said that he was “grateful for the flight attendant’s response” and that “we’ve got to be aware that there are still enemies to the country.” In contrast, when President Obama first spoke about the Christmas Day plot on Dec. 28, he gave a lengthy statement in order to “update the American people on the attempted terrorist attack.”