Utter nonsense!

Even after last month's deadly courthouse shooting in Atlanta, Georgia, "there's no plan to make security decisions based on officers' gender or strength," according to the Fulton County Sheriff's office.

Investigators blame last month’s deadly Atlanta courthouse shooting on a series of mistakes and missteps. But some affirmative action critics say it boils down to the fact that there was a woman deputy escorting accused gunman Brian Nichols... .

"You have a female officer who is about 5 feet 2 inches tall, versus a criminal in this case — a former linebacker who is 6 feet tall," said John Lott, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank in Washington.

Those in favor of affirmative action — the policy of hiring and recruiting with the intent of eliminating effects of past discrimination or preventing discrimination altogether — say the practice shouldn’t get the blame for the March 11 shooting rampage at Fulton County Superior Court ... in Atlanta.

"Affirmative action certainly cannot be the scapegoat for sloppy procedures or for not being attentive," said Bob Ethridge of the American Association for Affirmative Action. "A lot of different things went wrong."

Affirmative action policies can be blamed, however, when they are at least partially responsible for what happened. In this instance, it seems that they were.

Mr. Ethridge, "a lot of different things" may, in fact, have gone wrong, but that does not mean that affirmative action policies weren't to blame, at least in part, and possibly in large part, for what happened.

It is patently obvious to me that a five foot two inch tall grandmother shouldn't be escorting a six foot tall, thirty-three year old former football line backer, at the very least not by herself!