Say hello to "Driving While Muslim."

A bill with bi-partisan support has been introduced in New York to allow police to engage in racial and ethic profiling:

The proposed legislation would authorize law enforcement officials to "consider race and ethnicity as one of many factors that could be used in identifying persons who can be initially stopped, questioned, frisked and/or searched."

This is a mistake. The law will be misused. From Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union:

"Racial and ethnic profiling has been shown time and time again to be not only anathema to principles of equality, but it's bad law enforcement," she said in a telephone interview. Lieberman likened targeting people as possible suspects based on race or ethnicity to "tactics used by the Bush administration - like the roundup of Muslims, or special registration of immigrants."