The REAL Terrorists in our Midst

It's not Osama. It's not al-Qaeda. It's not even the Democrats. Nope, according to far-right wing wacko group Accountability Utah, the real terrorist is Utah State Senator Howard Stephenson (R-Draper). Helpfully reminding us that "not all terrorists wear turbans," AU argues that Stephenson has "promote[d] terrorism, violence, and lawlessness." What did Stephenson do to merit such a claim? Well, according to The Salt Like City Tribune, it's because he voted for a bill stripping illegal aliens of their drivers licenses and giving them instead "driving privilege cards" that wouldn't be acceptable as government identification.

Now, for one glorious, naive second, I assumed their protest was against a really stupid bill that both unnecessarily degrades immigrants and makes our nation less safe by pushing the illegal community further underground and farther out of reach of the law. After all, it strikes me that since the majority of illegal immigrants are generally law abiding, giving them legitimate identification would make it easier to either spot and punish the terrorists (if they tried to get fraudulent ID) or track them (if they tried to stay in the system). Pushing every illegal into the underground community just let's the terrorists blend in with the crowd, and makes it harder for the police to infiltrate the communities they hide within. But that was silly! AU is actually attacking the good senator because the bill doesn't go far enough: "Under the pretense of this reform, this legislation continues to allow al-Qaida operatives to obtain Utah driver's licenses and roam freely in our communities." And the comparison to terrorism? According to the Tribune, the organization argued that "the bin Laden comparison was not egregious because Stephenson is contributing to a society that gives incentives to undocumented workers." Moral equivalency, anyone?

Only the farthest reaches of the far right could possibly say that one is a terrorist by giving "incentives to undocumented workers." And some people say the Democrats have been hijacked by extremists...

Thanks to Wonkette for the heads-up.