Really?

By Eniko Jordan

Dinosaur flatulence, Gitmo lawyer in Muslim garb, and banning school bake sales. Really? Here is just a sampling of last week’s news stories that boggle the mind.

At last week’s Gitmo terrorist hearing, Cheryl Bormann, who is not Muslim, but is the attorney for Walid bin Attash, caused a stir when she wore traditional Arab garb into the courtroom, which covered everything but her face. Actually, the stir wasn’t that she wore the outfit. She caused an uproar when she said the other women in the courtroom should also wear traditional Muslim garb out of respect for the sensibilities of the suspects.

Really? I say “Too bad,” to Walid and his friends. Deal with it. The “Gitmo Five” showed no respect for the sensibilities of the 3,000 people they killed on 9/11. I mean sensibilities, like maybe the desire to keep breathing. They’ve shown no regard for the sensibilities of their victim’s families. When I heard about this lawyer’s nonsensical appeal to be sensitive to these terrorists, all I could think of was the horrified people perched at the windows of the Twin Towers, who had to make the desperate decision to die by fire and smoke, or jump and spend the last second of their life flying like an angel before their bodies were smashed to bits on the ground below.

According to The Washington Post, chief military prosecutor Brigadier General Mark Martins said the request was not worthy of a response. Kudos to him.

This week the Boston Herald reported that the state’s health department has banned bake sales in schools in Massachusetts beginning August 1st. This particular ban applies to 30 minutes before the start of classes and thirty minutes after the school day ends, but school banquets, after-hours events and even football games are being targeted for a similar ban. Brownies, cupcakes, and chocolate chip cookies now seem to be the new axis of evil.

Ironically the Massachusetts Department of Public Health and Education insists they are not trying to regulate what people eat. “We’re not trying to get into anyone’s lunch box,” DPH medical director Lauren Smith told the Boston Herald. “We know that schools need those clubs and resources. We want them to be sure and have them, but to do them in a different way.”
Really? Isn’t the express goal of what some people have been calling “food-nazis” to change what people eat? And since they can’t (yet) regulate what one eats at home, they are trying to regulate what one eats in public.
Jeff Katz, a talk radio host at Boston’s Talk 1200, had a funny take on the bake sale brownie ban.
“Only in Massachusetts would the Attorney General say it’s not illegal to be an illegal alien, but it is illegal to sell a cupcake for the football team. When they outlaw cupcakes only outlaws will have cupcakes,” he quipped.
Inserting a morsel of common sense into the argument, the Massachusetts House of Representatives has passed a budget amendment that would allow cities and towns to decide whether they want to adhere to those public health guidelines. It is expected that the Massachusetts Senate will do the same and the governor will sign it.
Maybe if the officials of the Massachusetts Public Health Department just enjoyed a dessert once in a while they wouldn’t be so grumpy. Get a life and eat a cookie! Or better yet, why don’t they impose a weight limit or a body mass index threshold on their own employees. Then when every single employee at the health department can’t “pinch an inch,” maybe then maybe their advice would have some weight.
Back to dinosaur flatulence. In a new study published last week, David Wilkinson of Liverpool John Moores University estimates that 150 million years ago the giant reptiles contributed to global warming by releasing as much as 570 million tons of methane through dinosaur flatulence.
Really? No, this wasn’t the cause of the extinction of the dinosaurs, but I bet it made for some very uncomfortable dino dinner dates. But seriously, who cares, and how can they even tell?
While all these stories have their nonsensical sides, one story is extrememly serious. Attorney General Holder is being held in contempt of Congress for his failure to cooperate with the House Oversight Committee’s investigation into the disgraceful “Fast and Furious” weapons debacle. And kudos to those, both Republican and Democrat, who have finally had just about enough of Holder’s games.
Could it be that Holder will finally be held accountable for his irresponsible behavior, and utter contempt for the law? It’s about time. It’s really, really, really, about time.

Award-winning columnist Eniko Jordan is a Pocatello resident and freelance writer for the Idaho State Journal.