THE OTHER SHOE DROPS: Updates To Previous Posts
† Judge: Veils Not Allowed In My Courtroom (second item): Lisa Valentine, 40, was arrested and ordered to serve 10 days in jail for contempt of court after refusing to take her Muslim head scarf off at a courthouse security checkpoint in Douglasville, GA, reports The Associated Press. Court policies disallow any hats or headgear in court, and Valentine is not being forced to follow a rule that applies only to Muslims or only to her. Not that this prevented Valentine from complaining that she had been “stripped of my civil, my human rights.” Natch, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is sticking its nose into the matter.
Court officers can be forgiven for their abundance of caution, considering the courthouse murders that took place in nearby Atlanta three years ago.
† So This Is What Passes For “Art” Nowadays (third item): Inspired by the particulars of the criminal complaint against IL Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s (D), Chicago artist Bruce Elliott whipped up a nude portrait of the embattled, Kipling-quoting pol that he plans to hang on the wall of Old Town Ale House - right alongside his nude of AK Gov. Sarah Palin, reports Chicago Tribune. Titled "The Cavity Search," the painting depicts a handcuffed Hot Rod being processed for admittance to the penitentiary: His orange jumpsuit has been pulled down to his knees, presumably by the same prison guard pulling on a glove.
Editorial Note: Should Eliott decide to do a nude portrait of ex-Gov. Eliot Spitzer (D-NY), The Stiletto would like to remind him that “Client 9” always kept his black socks on. If you've got some time on your hands, peruse this listing of governors, and just imagine where Eliott's "naked govs" oeuvre d'art could go from there.
† Updates To Previous Posts (third second item, Why We Need Gitmo): The Washington Post reports that 10 years after British police apprehended al-Qaeda terrorists Khalid al-Fawwaz and two co-conspirators suspected in the bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa with the intention of extraditing them to this country to stand trial, “none of the defendants [one of whom since died of cancer] has moved any closer to a U.S. courtroom”:
As the long-delayed British extraditions show, it is extraordinarily difficult to bring international terrorism suspects to justice by prosecuting them in U.S. civilian courts. The cases underscore the challenge facing President-elect Barack Obama as he tries to find a way to close the Navy prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and end the military tribunals set up by the Bush administration to handle terrorism cases from abroad.
Britain and other allies have long complained about Guantánamo, the tribunals and extralegal U.S. tactics used to fight al-Qaeda. At the same time, however, they have often blocked or resisted efforts by the U.S. government to prosecute accused terrorists in federal court.
Fawwaz and the others are among half a dozen accused terrorists whom the U.S. government has been seeking for years to extradite from Britain. Despite British approval of a "fast-track" extradition law in 2003 and a new treaty with the United States, the defendants have thwarted every attempt to deport them, aided by a British bureaucracy in no hurry to move the cases along. …
Other allies have also been reluctant to extradite terrorism suspects for trial in the United States, sometimes letting them go free instead.
† We Fight Them Over There So We Don’t Have To Fight Them Over Here?: On November 1st, Mohamud Ali Hassan, 18, a Somali immigrant who lived in MN for 10 years and a dozen others like him “disappeared,” reports USA Today. It turns out, Hassan went back to Somalia to join up with an Islamist militia:
The FBI is asking questions, as are members of the Somali community. The Abubakar As-Saddique Islamic Center denies any wrongdoing, but many here suspect that the mosque and its imam are radicalizing their youth to become jihadists in an Islamic holy war overseas or perhaps even in the United States. …
Details of the disappearances are few, but what little is known is cause for concern, says Abdizirak Bihi, a community activist who represents six families of young men who disappeared in early November. …
All were good students, had no problems with the law, Bihi says. All were raised by single mothers and spent a lot of time in the Abubakar As-Saddique Islamic Center. …
Shirwa Ahmed, 19, who left in August with no notice to his family, was among five terrorists who blew themselves up Oct. 29 in an attack that killed 24 people in Somalia, Bihi says.
"We are wanting the government and politicians to investigate who is responsible for sending our kids and we are requesting the American government to help us to get us back our kids." Bihi says.
Other Somali immigrants worry the disappearances may foretell dangers for their adopted nation. "That kid that blew himself up in Somalia could have done it here in Minneapolis," says Omar Jamal, executive director of the Somali Justice Advocacy Center in St. Paul.
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