if I burned it (arson for fun and free publicity, or not)

( yeesh. )

huzzah!

Patrick won a Hugo!

racist hysteric apologizes for targeting DOD-approved swarthy people

the woman who got a plane full of people trapped overnight at the airport when she got the vapors over flying with scary arab people would like to apologize to the military contractors she got pulled off the plane now that they've lawyered up

She was simply “protecting my tiny little family,” she insisted, adding that “all I could think of was 9/11.”

But yesterday, Leigh Robbins offered an apology to seven Iraqi men who were passengers on a plane scheduled to fly from San Diego to Chicago on Tuesday night. Robbins was also on the plane but was so terrified the men might be terrorists that she demanded to get off, causing a delay that prompted the airline to postpone the flight until the next morning.

The Iraqis, as it turned out, were consultants working with Marines at Camp Pendleton. They say they were humiliated when airport security, reacting to Robbins' concerns, took them aside and questioned them. They have hired a lawyer.

“I know they're upset, and they have every right to be,” said Robbins, 35, a Richmond, Va., homemaker. She said she was traveling with her two young sons that night and decided to err on the side of caution.

“How can you overreact when it's your children?” she said.

Woah. Poser.

Well, you could go flying off into a bizarre xenophobic wingnut panic and disrupt the lives of hundreds of people and blame it on your maternal instincts, as if somehow nature has bestowed aggressive ignorance unto us mothers to keep our children safe.

Just a suggestion.

Ms. Robbins' probable cause? On of the men "looked mean" when he came out of the bathroom.

American Airlines Flight 590, with 126 passengers on board, had been scheduled to depart Lindbergh Field at 11 p.m. Tuesday. In an interview yesterday, Robbins said she was sitting in the back of the plane with her children, awaiting the departure from the gate, when one of the Iraqis walked by to use the restroom.

She heard him “clunking around” inside the bathroom. When he came out, he had a suspicious look on his face, she said.

“He looked so mean, the way he was looking at everyone,” Robbins said. “It was very frightening, like something out of a movie.”

I can't really add to the perfection of that quote. I just needed to stop for a moment and contemplate its beauty. I'm sure it was, Ms. Robbins. Just like a movie.

AAR, Ms. Robbins' little break with reality caused a great deal of trouble for an awful lot of people (and this doesn't account for the people waiting on the second and third generation delays in flights that were dependent on this one arriving on time)

Robbins gathered up her sons, ages 9 and 4, and demanded to be let off the plane. The crew complied with her request, but the resulting delay meant the plane couldn't take off by Lindbergh Field's 11:30 p.m. curfew. The airline was forced to postpone the departure until 10:15 a.m. the next day.

Meanwhile, airport security officers questioned the seven Iraqis and determined that they posed no threat.

One of the men, David Al Watan, 30, of Dearborn, Mich., said the experience was mortifying because they were singled out for questioning based on their appearance.

He and the other Iraqis are employed by an Alaska-based defense contractor that works with the U.S. military. Watan, who fled Iraq in 1991 and said his mother was killed by Saddam Hussein's regime, wants an apology from American Airlines.

“While they sit in their air conditioning, I was out in the desert helping to save Marines' lives,” Watan said. “I am an American. I love this country. I would die for it.”...

Robbins hasn't been able to reach the seven Iraqis to apologize personally. She feels terrible about the whole thing, she said.

“I'm very sorry, but I'd do anything to protect my kids,” she said.

Um, no. Sorry, lady. David Al Watan would do anything to protect your kids. He volunteered to go into a war zone and get his ass shot at. What you would do to protect your kids is turn him over to the authorities for flying while you don't like his face.

Stay off public transportation, wouldja?

why Larry Craig?

this week's favorite parlor game is speculating why Larry Craig was dropped by his party for sexual misconduct and, say, Senator Vitter wasn't.

Well, it sure did come at a convenient time, didn't it? The papers have been full of career retrospectives of Mr. Rove and Mr. Gonzales this past few weeks, and much of that information is probably new to a lot of voters. Now the papers are full of Mr. Craig. A good scandal is always good for distracting folks.

And there are some folks who aren't great fans of Mr. Craig's

Barr, one of the most conservative members of Congress when he served in the House, leads an increasing group of disenchanted Republicans who have had enough of Bush’s misuse of the law and encroachment of civil liberties that are supposed to be protected by the Constitution. He has joined with fellow conservative firebrand Phyllis Schlafly and the ultra-liberal American Civil Liberties Union to fight renewal of many of the rights-robbing provisions of the USA Patriot Act.

And he’s not alone. Republican Senators Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, Larry Craig of Idaho and Olympia Snowe of Maine question Bush’s actions along with Pennsylvania Republican Arlen Specter, chairman of the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee.

...

Bush is also angry with Craig, a conservative who joined with Democrats in a filibuster to defeat permanent renewal of the Patriot Act. As a meeting recently, Bush referred to Craig as “a goddamned traitor” and told the National Republican Senatorial Committee to start recruiting someone to run against the Idaho Senator in 2008.

Such anger against those who dare oppose him is typical for a President who all too often launches into obscene tirades when his policies are questioned. Bush, on many occasions, has called political opponents “traitors’ and, in private, refers to Senate Judiciary Chairman Arlen Specter as a “lily-livered bastard.”

Craig, however, is unfazed by all this and says the Patriot Act “doesn't do enough to protect the civil liberties of innocent Americans.”

Amazing coincidence, really.