Republicans: October 2007 Archives

I know the current administration likes Muslims about as much as they like the Eebil Coloreds, but c'mon, guys:

The UK's first Muslim Minister has chalked up his second detention at the hands of the US Department of Homeland Security - with exquisite irony, at Dulles Airport in Washington DC on his way back from talks with, er, the DHS on tackling terrorism.

Shahid Malik, who was also recently identified as Britain's most expensive MP, was detained by DHS officials, and he and his hand luggage were searched. He reports that he and two others, both black Muslims, were taken aside for further questioning.

OK, so they're Eebil Coloreds and they're Muslims, they must be bad, right? Even if they're holding diplomatic passports from H.M. Goverment. But it gets better:

Malik was previously held by staff at JFK in New York, last year while returning from an event where he'd been a keynote speaker on defeating extremism. Then, he claims, he was subjected to an "abusive attitude" from DHS staff.

Let it not be said that our government isn't thorough--it wasn't enough that we pissed this guy off last year, we had to do it again! And he's not the only British government official that DHS has pulled this stunt on:

The DHS' terrorist detection systems do seem to have an unfortunate knack when it comes to impressing relevant British Parliamentarians. Three years ago it contrived to demonstrate the efficacy of no-fly lists, in a negative sort of way, to a delegation from the UK's Transport Committee, headed by chair Gwyneth Dunwoody. As the impressed Dunwoody commented on the regime at the time, "it's a sort of general level of arrogant incompetence." Malik is no doubt similarly onside in the war on terror.

What's interesting is that the Right Honorable Ms. Dunwoody appears to be neither Muslim nor Colored:

"arrogant incompetence?"

nah...

"fucking morons"

(h/t El Reg)

I now officially declare a moratorium on Godwin's Law with respect to the Bush Administration, thanks to this tidbit from Frank Rich of the NYT today:

By any legal standards except those rubber-stamped by Alberto Gonzales, we are practicing torture, and we have known we are doing so ever since photographic proof emerged from Abu Ghraib more than three years ago. As Andrew Sullivan, once a Bush cheerleader, observed last weekend in The Sunday Times of London, America’s “enhanced interrogation” techniques have a grotesque provenance: “Verschärfte Vernehmung, enhanced or intensified interrogation, was the exact term innovated by the Gestapo to describe what became known as the ‘third degree.’ It left no marks. It included hypothermia, stress positions and long-time sleep deprivation.”

Some parallels to the Nazis are just extreme, like using "Lebensraum" to describe Israeli settlements on the West Bank, but what scares me about things like the reference above is that I don't think that these guys are smart enough to be students of the Gestapo. They came up with this shit on their own.