STILL HERE: A young Iranian man, Abdollah Mehran, whom we first wrote about in our Nov. 12, 2001, issue when he was 28 years old, is still in America and the federal government is still trying to deport him. Mehran said he came here to escape persecution in his home country but could not substantiate his claims in order to gain asylum. He did have one major piece of credibility, however: He turned himself in as an illegal alien not once but twice. Ever since, federal immigration authorities have been trying to expel Mehran from the country but have been unable to obtain a final legal ruling to do so despite the risks posed by some in Mehran's demographic-young male Muslim immigrants. Currently, he is not in detention but lives with an American friend while continuing to fight his case. "I am going to keep fighting my case," says Mehran. "I understand people are worried after 9/11 but this is unfair. They keep trying to send me out. I didn't come here to go to bars and dance with girls, I came here for freedom."
NAVY CAVES: Vice Adm. Rodney Rempt, superintendent of the Naval Academy at Annapolis, Md., had a fit of feminism and changed the lyrics of the college's 80-year-old fight song, so it is now sanitized for politically correct audiences. Female midshipmen have sung the song for 28 years, but Rempt decided it was no longer acceptable. So he changed "Now college men from sea to sea" and "For sailor men in battle fair" to "Now colleges from sea to sea" and "For sailors brave in battle fair." As with all leftist jihads, Rempt's changes are not about equal treatment of the sexes: Female attendees will still get the special treatment denied men, and be held to the standards lower than those applied to men that women in the military have come to expect. No word on whether the Navy will change the term "midshipman" to "midshipperson" or forbid the term "band of brothers" in favor of "band of siblings."
REMEMBER CHICOM MURDERS: House Policy Committee Chairman Chris Cox (R.-Calif.) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D.-Calif.) introduced on June 1 a resolution to commemorate the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre on June 4. Said Cox, "Fifteen years ago, Tiananmen Square marked not only a tragedy, but a decisive turning point in the fight for freedom. People's Liberation Army troops won the battle against the Chinese people that day, but they will surely lose the war to imprison the human spirit because we will never forget. The day will soon come when all of the Chinese people will have the right to speak and debate freely."
NO SURPRISE: A new study of divorced or separated parents in Bristol, England, has confirmed the growing mountain of scientific evidence: Lack of contact with their fathers tends to destroy children's lives. "After looking at couples who had split up, researchers found there was a direct relationship between their children's behavioral problems and the amount of contact they had with their natural father, and the quality of the relationship between father and child," says a press release from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children, on whose data the conclusions were based. "The effect was more pronounced in single-parent families, particularly teenaged mothers. In these families the children were particularly vulnerable if they had no contact with their real father."
HEAVY PATRIOT: Heavy metal rock music is not good for the soul, but Jon Schaffer is no left-leaning pantywaist of a musician. The lead member of Florida band Iced Earth told a heavy metal magazine, Brave Words & Bloody Knuckles, a few interesting tidbits, reported the Weekly Standard. "I will stand rock solid by the fact that I know this country has done a hundred times more good for other countries around the world than anybody else ever has," said Schaffer. Asked by his Canadian interviewer if the September 11 attacks were "justified due to America's presence in the Middle East," Schaffer replied, "No, it wasn't justified. Not at all. And anybody who says so needs to have their [expletive] head examined." And asked if "you think 9/11 will be viewed as the first event in the U.S. empire's decline and fall," Schaffer said, "No. This is not an empire, first of all. If the United States was an empire, your country would be our 51st state."
