Mukasey Makes the Right Call, Plus Second Time Is *Not* the Charm!
Samhita of Feministe asks an unsurprising question about Attorney General Mukasey putting pressure on the (Monica Goodling-bolloxed) Immigration Appeals Board to reverse their decision to send a refugee back to Mali on the basis that, having already been genitally mutilated once she's not likely to be mutilated again. (Heck of a job, Bushie!)
Seriously, why? He hasn't seemed to care about international human rights violations in the past.
While digging deeper into the background of the Immigration Appeals Board (heck of a job, Bushie, revisited) Megan of Jezebel supplies the ominous answer (emphasis mine.)
Mukasey's order sends the case back to the Board of Immigration Appeals, which, one hopes, will not act like complete assholes the second time around. Mukasey pointed out that female genital mutilation can, indeed, be inflicted more than once — making the ruling factually wrong — and that further persecution need not take the same form as the initial persecution to qualify the woman for asylum. So, the Bush Administration finally did something right... only, actually, it's all their fault in the first place.
I remember reading... somewhere... this summer that FGM victims are often able to masturbate by rubbing their scar tissue -- which makes sense given what we know now about the actual size and structure of the clitoris. The idea that adherents of the practice might keep doing it till their victims are rendered completely compliant with "no-sex" class ideology is pretty, um, discouraging.
I'm not at all a fan of circumcision period but anybody out there still want to debate whether male circumcision is identical to female "circumcision?"
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As Megan points out, Mukasey was only doing his *actual job* of cleaning up after the disgraceful behavior of the Bush DOJ, but give credit where credit's due. Good for him.




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