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Wednesday, Sep 27, 2006
Talk about a tough room
In the New and Improved Constitution-Lite America, humor is once again a punishable offense. All you budding Lenny Bruce's out there, watch your step, punk!
This is the kind of "justice" the Congress is about to enshrine into law:
By James Rupert, Newsday | November 6, 2005
PESHAWAR, Pakistan -- Badr Zaman Badr and his brother Abdurrahim Muslim Dost relish writing a good joke that jabs a corrupt politician or distills the sufferings of fellow Afghans. Badr admires the political satires in ''The Canterbury Tales" and ''Gulliver's Travels," and Dost wrote some wicked lampoons in the 1990s, accusing Afghan mullahs of growing rich while preaching and organizing jihad.
So in 2002, when the US military shackled the writers and flew them to the US naval prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, among prisoners whom Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld declared ''the worst of the worst" violent terrorists, the brothers found life imitating farce. For months, interrogators grilled them over a satirical article Dost had written in 1998, when the Clinton administration offered a $5 million reward for Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. Dost responded that Afghans put up 5 million Afghanis, about $113, for the arrest of President Clinton.
''It was a lampoon . . . of the poor Afghan economy" under the Taliban, Badr recalled.
The interrogators didn't get the joke, he said. ''Again and again, they were asking questions about this article. We had to explain that this was a satire." He paused. ''It was really pathetic."
It took the brothers three years to convince the Americans that they posed no threat to Clinton or the United States, and to get released.
PESHAWAR, Pakistan -- Badr Zaman Badr and his brother Abdurrahim Muslim Dost relish writing a good joke that jabs a corrupt politician or distills the sufferings of fellow Afghans. Badr admires the political satires in ''The Canterbury Tales" and ''Gulliver's Travels," and Dost wrote some wicked lampoons in the 1990s, accusing Afghan mullahs of growing rich while preaching and organizing jihad.
So in 2002, when the US military shackled the writers and flew them to the US naval prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, among prisoners whom Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld declared ''the worst of the worst" violent terrorists, the brothers found life imitating farce. For months, interrogators grilled them over a satirical article Dost had written in 1998, when the Clinton administration offered a $5 million reward for Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. Dost responded that Afghans put up 5 million Afghanis, about $113, for the arrest of President Clinton.
''It was a lampoon . . . of the poor Afghan economy" under the Taliban, Badr recalled.
The interrogators didn't get the joke, he said. ''Again and again, they were asking questions about this article. We had to explain that this was a satire." He paused. ''It was really pathetic."
It took the brothers three years to convince the Americans that they posed no threat to Clinton or the United States, and to get released.
Sometimes she needs a reminder
Dear Senator Feinstein:
Secret prisons? The end of habeas corpus? Torture?
Not in my name!
If you fight the good fight, your seat is safe. Just look at Boxer's victory in 2004. If you go along to get along ... well, ask Joementum how that's working out.
All I'm asking for is fearless devotion to our founding principles.
cheers,
-Mark
Secret prisons? The end of habeas corpus? Torture?
Not in my name!
If you fight the good fight, your seat is safe. Just look at Boxer's victory in 2004. If you go along to get along ... well, ask Joementum how that's working out.
All I'm asking for is fearless devotion to our founding principles.
cheers,
-Mark
Tuesday, Sep 26, 2006
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