Sometimes my initial reaction to condemn conservative idiocy as pernicious and malevolent and dangerous is just overcome by awe at the weird hypocrisy of it all. This is one of those times:
The government has told a federal appeals court that a suit by an F.B.I. translator who was fired after accusing the bureau of ineptitude should not be allowed to proceed because it would cause "significant damage to the national security and foreign policy of the United States."
Lawyers for the government said in a brief filed with the court on Thursday that the suit could not continue without disclosing privileged and classified information.
The translator, Sibel Edmonds, was a contract linguist for the bureau for about six months, translating material in Azerbaijani, Farsi and Turkish. Ms. Edmonds was dismissed in 2002 after complaining repeatedly that bureau linguists had produced slipshod and incomplete translations of important terrorism intelligence before and after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
So here you've got a conservative-run government trying to squelch a case that accuses the government of incompetence. Let me be clearer: Here you've got a government run by folks who believe that government bureaucracies are incompetent and that national security is paramount arguing that a case exposing bureaucratic incompetence that endangers our national security can't go forward. It's like they're denying their very reason for existence!
That, I guess, is the modern Republican party. One big existential crisis made manifest and given the reigns of a superpower. It's their wacky kids movie, I guess, and we're just all living in it.
Via Nathan Newman.
