Insert a Trite Metaphor for a Corral #57

Posted on February 23, 2007 in Roundup

Despite what the organizer of the “find the illegal immigrant game” says, it is not politically correct to support immigration in this country. If you do, you fail the litmus test of the moment. I am sure, too, that when the young Republicans think of illegal immigrants, they are not thinking of Canadians or Swedes or Brits. They don’t consider how easy it is to make a Cuban into a legal immigrant just by changing the law so that they become a resident the moment they step on U.S. soil. No, they specifically hate Latinos and Haitians. And in the political climate of today, that’s okay.

In their eyes, it is as easy to find the illegal immigrant as putting a badge on him. Just listen to the accent. Look at the skin color. You’ve got him.

Keep you eyes on the border, they repeat. Keep your eyes on the Canadian Mexican border. Except when you need to build a wall.

• Torture on Trial: Lawyers for Jose Padilla are arguing that he is unfit to stand trial because he has been driven insane by the techniques used by interrogators. Padilla, a Brooklyn-born former gang member, was classified as an “enemy combatant” and taken to a navy prison in Charleston, South Carolina. He was kept in a cell 9ft by 7ft, with no natural light, no clock and no calendar. Whenever Padilla left the cell, he was shackled and suited in heavy goggles and headphones. Padilla was kept under these conditions for 1,307 days. He was forbidden contact with anyone but his interrogators, who punctured the extreme sensory deprivation with sensory overload, blasting him with harsh lights and pounding sounds. Padilla also says he was injected with a “truth serum”, a substance his lawyers believe was LSD or PCP. Is this the beginning of the end for the so-called War on Terror? What was described was going too far, way too far.
• Can You See What I See? Uh, No: The man on the far right — the one with the lens cap over his binoculars — is Israeli Defence Minister Amir Peretz. Peretz has come under fire for his policies in Lebanon. Perhaps we know why he seems to be missing something.

  

• Video: An interview with Senator Mike Gravel.
• Dog Bites Child: Health experts in the UK are concerned about the increase in hospital admissions for dog bites. Most of these involve young children who have been left to play with the dog on their own. The solution, say pedatricians, is to make owners more accountable. Dr. Rachel Besser says “We must stop placing blame on the dogs themselves and focus attention instead on who holds the lead at the other end – or who isn’t holding the lead as the case may be. It is clear that not all dog owners appreciate that children should not be left unsupervised with a dog. Just as some parents are obliged to take parenting classes, I would like to see equivalent mandatory classes for expectant dog owners to teach them about the responsibilities of dog ownership.” I wonder, to what degree, is this also happening in the USA? Or are bad dogs being made into coats?
• One Down, How Many More to Go?: Have years of reading about priest scandals in the Catholic Church worn you out? Want something different? The Southern Baptists are next. Though the Southern Baptist Church has admitted that some cases of abuse have occurred, it offered a sort of über-defense that it can’t conduct investigations about abuse complaints because of the decentralized nature of the church. Unlike in the Catholic Church, Southern Baptist churches operate independently, hiring their own ministers and conducting investigations. This fact, which is also true of most Protestant churches, may make pursuing institutional justice difficult. But if SNAP has even a shred of the evidence that it had against the Catholics, it promises to be one more wild ride into the American id. For those who have been abused by a Baptist minister, there is a web site: Stop Baptist Predators.

The LA Times Took the Best Line: Beverly Hills has issued ballots for its Iranian residents who constitute about one in five residents. The LAT says that this is going too Farsi.

If you find any articles worthy of mention in these roundups, send the URL to gazissax at best dot com. And feel free to comment!