Wednesday, January 10, 2007

Scarlet License Plates

Orange, actually. Just found out that Ohio makes you put orange license plates on your car if you get a DUI. Not sure how I feel about that. Well, actually, I am pretty sure that I don't like it; I was just saying "not sure how I feel about that" to indicate that I didn't like it.

Also, I heard this little exchange on some BBC news program- they had this guy Mark somebody, the director of military something for the Southern US (which evidently includes Guantanamo). I don't have the exact quotes, but this is pretty close:

Interviewer: What would you say about the complaints against conditions in Guantanamo?
Mark: Well, we've worked hard to make improvements, and now the detainees have access to first-rate medical care, TV, radio, a library, and we consider Guantanamo to be an excellent facility.
I: How can you justify detaining people indefinitely without charging them with crimes?
M: This is the war on terror now, and these people are not criminals, they are enemy combatants, and you don't return enemy combatants to their home countries until the war's over.
(note: that's scary. the "end of the war on terror" could be 20, 50, 100 years from now. Or never. Just like the "war on drugs." But anyway:)
I: What about people like this? I have this letter that a 9-year-old British boy wrote, and here's what it says: "Please release my father soon. I don't know why he's in jail. He's a good man. Please let daddy come home" (or something to that effect)
M: I can't comment on individual cases, but again, these are enemy combatants, and we have to treat them as such.
I: But this guy was picked up in the Gambia. That's not a war zone.
(pause)
M: (something lame about a "global war on terror")
I: Boo-yah! Boo-yah! (pees all over Mark)

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