Josh Marshall at TPM appended this reader comment to a post about the Crotchfire bomber:

You’re focusing too much on the father’s warning. It’s the warning combined with these additional facts that make the government’s failure so alarming:

1. Passenger’s name: Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab
2. One-way ticket from Yemen to Detroit
3. Ticket paid for with $3,000 cash
4. Passenger has no luggage

Josh Marshall does not comment at all on this quote, just passes it along, saying “TPM Reader RK notes this …”

Since he says nothing to distance himself from any part of the comment, we can only assume that he’s quoting this approvingly. Or, at least, that he sees nothing objectionable in the statement that the passenger’s Muslim name should have been an alarm bell, along with the other three facts.

Can someone please explain to me how this is not the same kind of profiling that is so odious and unacceptable when Republicans propose it?

Or let me put it this way: shouldn’t facts 2 through 4 be equally alarming regardless of what the passenger’s name is? So when you say that the fact that he has a Muslim name is in itself a suspicious circumstance, is that not the very definition of profiling?