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For a while, I had hopes that they'd just give up on the annual Emmy Awards ceremony, after postponing it twice on account of Sept. 11. Then we'd have room on the cultural calendar for what unfortunately could become an annual event: the Taliban Awards.
These would go to the American institution or person who has attempted to advance his agenda by claiming the patriotic high ground for himself while accusing his opponents of aiding the enemy -- or at least implying that they're working hand-in-glove with Osama bin Laden.
For instance, a recent column inspired an email from a fellow who claims to be a reserve deputy sheriff in Jefferson County, as well as an attorney.
Your commentary ... is exactly what and why bin Laden
is attacking us,
he informed me.
Did I write that America was a Great Satan which had profaned sacred soil with soldiers, some of them women exercising their right to bare arms, despite the strictures of Saudi law?
No. What I did write was a column that supported a decision by conservative Republican official who was re-elected without any opposition last year. That official was Ed Rodgers, district attorney for the 11th Judicial District, and the decision at issue was his plea bargain with two homicidal maniacs, Joel and Michael Stovall.
They both received sentences of life plus 896 years. Rodgers did not go to trial to seek the death penalty because he deemed it unlikely that capital punishment would be imposed, and so it would be unethical to take that course.
Now, a district attorney is both a lawyer and a
politician, so some people may have trouble believing that
ethics
could be a consideration. But that's not
what's at issue here.
The issue is whether supporting the reasonable decision of a duly elected official charged with making such decisions explains why bin Laden is attacking the United States.
I can't even imagine a connection. But this correspondent seems to assume that anyone who disagrees with him must be an ally of bin Laden, which makes him a contender for the Taliban Award.
Then there's Tom Bender, a Larimer County commissioner,
whose Soapbox
opinion piece was published in the
Oct. 27 edition of the Fort Collins Coloradoan.
He doesn't just hint; he flat-out calls his opponents
the American Taliban.
Who are they? Practitioners
of anti-American, politically correct, or PC, activism
here at home.... We patriotic Americans have alerted
citizens for years of the American-loathing PC agenda that
has been a serious threat to America for almost 70
years.
As a blunt and offensive fellow, I have little use for most manifestations of Political Correctness. Granted, some PC is merely good manners, but plenty of it is nothing more than ranting and whining from the professionally sensitive, as though there were an enforceable constitutional right not to have one's feelings hurt.
But I never thought of the PC crowd as terrorists.
People who complain about squaw
on maps don't seem
like the suicide-bomber type, but maybe Bender knows
something we don't.
Then there's our Congress. When it's not busy passing laws to protect airline stockholders, it's displaying a curious inability to tell the difference between the Bill of Rights and a roll of toilet paper.
That was the case during Halloween week when the House
(which is still under the control of the party that says it
favors a smaller and less intrusive government) passed the
Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing
Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct
Terrorism Act
-- with the acronym, not coincidentally,
of USA PATRIOT Act.
Rep. Ron Paul, a Texas Republican, observed that The
insult is to call a 'patriot bill' and suggest I'm not
patriotic because I insisted upon finding out what is in it
and voting no. I thought it was undermining the
Constitution, so I didn't vote for it -- and therefore I'm
somehow not a patriot. That's insulting.
So there's a lop-sided majority of the House in contention for a Taliban Award, because they've arranged matters so that anyone who opposes a bad piece of legislation can be branded as unpatriotic and by extension, a supporter of terrorism.
The worst part of this so-called antiterrorism bill
is the increased ability of the federal government to
commit surveillance on all of us without proper search
warrants,
Paul said, adding that there were many other
bad parts.
For standing up for our constitutional rights, as any
good American should, Ron Paul gets spun as a supporter of
terrorism because he refused to vote for the USA PATRIOT
Act.
So far I've encountered three contenders for the Taliban Award. I won't say I'm looking forward to other nominations, but if you've got others, send them to me. We might as well have some fun with this, at least until the authorities catch on.
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