G-strung
As if the FBI weren’t undergoing enough internal change. Now the buzz about the bureau surrounds the G-man who has become a G-woman.
“Richard has become Ricki,” says our FBI insider, after he er, she, successfully underwent a sex-change procedure, which involved surgery and hormone treatments.
We’re told everyday things, such as using restrooms, got a bit uncomfortable for fellow agents at the FBI field office as Ricki undertook the transformation.
Imperialist greeting
At least one State Department official is shaking his head after seeing the photograph posted on the State Department Web site of Ambassador Kevin E. Moley posing with City College of New York professor M.A. Samad-Matias, who made national headlines by blaming the United States for the September 11 terrorist atrocities.
An outspoken anthropology professor, Ms. Samad-Matias was quoted during a post-September 11 rally in New York as saying the deadly attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center towers were an “understandable Islamic response to Western imperialism.”
Apart from the photograph taken last week at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations in Geneva, the State official sent several news clippings detailing the professor’s anti-U.S. positions, including one in which she and fellow protesters marching on Washington on Sept. 29 called pending U.S. military action against al Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan “racist.”
Still, her anti-U.S. stance on the terrorism issue did not prevent Ms. Samad-Matias from being welcomed to the U.S. mission Thursday by Ambassador Moley or so we read from a print-friendly version of the State Department Web page:
“At the U.S. mission to the United Nations in Geneva, Ambassador Moley meets with students and faculty from the City College of New York who are participants in the Malik Shabazz Human Rights Institute Summer 2002 Program. The program is an outgrowth of the Admiral Family, an Islamic African-American nongovernmental organization involved in human rights education, and is dedicated to examining and improving human rights of people all over the world. It was their first visit to the U.S. Mission and Ambassador Moley extended them an invitation to return not only next year, but every year the group travels to Geneva.”
Souvenir firearms
A bill just introduced in Congress would allow war veterans to keep certain firearms brought home as souvenirs.
“We should not deny them a cherished souvenir because of a misunderstood law,” says Rep. Chris Cannon of Utah, who with fellow Republican Rep. Jim Gibbons of Nevada introduced the Veterans’ Heritage Firearms Act of 2002.
Mr. Cannon says many veterans, including 134,102 in his state of Utah, could face prison and fines for possessing war-trophy machine guns that are not registered. The guns are illegal, and veterans or their family members are required to surrender them to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms for destruction.
If the legislation is enacted, veterans will have 90 days to register the guns. To qualify, the souvenirs would have to have been be acquired before Oct. 31, 1967, by a member of the armed forces while stationed outside the United States.
Hold the lettuce
“They say an army marches on its stomach,” observes Christopher Horner, counsel to the Cooler Heads Coalition at Washington’s Competitive Enterprise Institute, who has traveled to Johannesburg to observe 10 days of planet planning at the U.N. World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD).
And oh, what a hypocritical planet it is.
“The army of anti-globalization youths slouched patiently in line at the Atlanta Hartsfield Airport’s Burger King franchise prior to boarding their modern 747,” Mr. Horner observes. “Five feet away stood a forlorn entrepreneur hawking vegetable dishes.”
You mean nobody paid Mr. Vegetable a visit?
“The vegetable hawker observed, with equal if better postured and groomed patience, as the unwashed transferred fistfuls of parental wealth against which they are traveling thousands of miles to deplore to the enemy,” Mr. Horner says. “Sun Tzu presciently scribbled something memorable about just such a scene in ‘The Art of War.’”
Were this American bunch any more loyal to their cause after touching down in Africa?
“Upon arrival, the committed anti-globalization army dutifully climbed into SUVs to travel in comfort and safety, with fewer trips. To the Marriott,” he reveals. “No one appeared to tally the carbon tithe they might be incurring to the Johannesburg summit and its high-profile admission of self-loathing, the ‘CO2 Legacy Project.’
“Under this unique penance WSSD attendees pay into a fund to offset the carbon dioxide emissions incurred in traveling here to denounce carbon dioxide emissionsþ” Mr. Horner explains.
