The folks over at ABC must think they are real coy smuggling a small cache of low-level radioactive uranium through several countries in Europe and ultimately into the United States.

The journey began on July 4 in a train station in Europe. ABCNews.com explains, "A suitcase containing 15 pounds of depleted uranium, shielded by a steel pipe with a lead lining, began a secret 25-day, seven-country journey. Its destination was the United States."

Not surprisingly, the cargo made it all the way to a New York Port Authority warehouse across the river from lower Manhattan, at the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge.

It had not been opened once for an inspection.

Given the number of airports, train stations, bus depots, and ports of entry, and the thousands of miles of highways connecting them all to two huge borders it is literally impossible to inspect every bag and every piece of cargo that comes into this country. There simply is not enough manpower.

What the ABC News' experiment has underscored is the importance of letting law enforcement officials do their job.

If we are serious about thwarting terrorists who would attempt to smuggle fissionable uranium or plutonium into the United States, local and state police along with the FBI, the CIA, and the Justice Department must have unfettered access to information.

They must have the latitude to pull people over for probable cause, to act on tips and question those who appear suspicious, and to detain suspects deemed a threat without worrying about a cadre of ACLU lawyers breathing down their necks fretting over alleged post-9/11 breaches of civil liberties.

I wonder what it would take to make these self-anointed champions of America's freedoms go away. Perhaps even a nuclear detonation in their own backyard would not be sufficient to silence their silliness.

They are always so quick to point to the Justice Department and its detention of terrorist suspects as one example of the trampling of the Constitution. One can almost hear them whisper "fascist" in the same sentence with John Ashcroft's name.

My freedoms haven't been compromised. And I am willing to stick my neck out and say yours haven't been either.

Law abiding citizens have nothing to fear.

Paul the apostle wrote a short dissertation on this issue in his letter to the Romans. In the thirteenth chapter he stated: "Rulers are not a terror to good works but to evil. …If you do evil, be afraid; for [the law] does not bear the sword in vain; for [it] is God's minister, an avenger to execute wrath on him who practices evil."

Notwithstanding, there will be mistakes made.

It appears as if one may have been made recently in Florida. Three Arab-American medical students in two automobiles were pulled over on I-75 on their way to Miami for allegedly having been overheard in a Georgia restaurant talking about plans to detonate an explosion on September 13.

An Associated Press story that appeared in the Florida Post quoted their lawyers as calling the situation "an incident of misunderstanding."

"They are Americans, just like any other American, who are proud to be American, who want to fulfill the American dream, and who were on the road to doing that when the American nightmare happened to them."

Mistakes such as these will be undoubtedly labeled the result of racial profiling and discrimination. They are, of course, but that does not necessarily mean that either racial profiling or discrimination is a bad thing in and of itself.

We need to remind ourselves that it was Arab terrorists who wreaked havoc in America on 9/11. And as long as the type of discrimination practiced is that which involves "the ability or power to see or make fine distinctions; discernment," Americans should not have a problem with it.

"Real Answers™" furnished courtesy of The Amy Foundation Internet Syndicate. To contact the author or The Amy Foundation, write or E-mail to: P. O. Box 16091, Lansing, MI 48901-6091; amyfoundtn@aol.com. Visit our website at www.amyfound.org.