A Brazilian judge, angry at the new US policy of photographing and fingerprinting incoming immigrants and visitors with visas, retaliated yesterday by requiring US visitors to Brazil to be photographed and fingerprinted as well. It's the kind of tit-for-tat petty revenge that often occurs in diplmatic relations, although rarely does the judiciary figure into it. However, the judge's comments were shocking:

"I consider the act absolutely brutal, threatening human rights, violating human dignity, xenophobic and worthy of the worst horrors committed by the Nazis," said Federal Judge Julier Sebastiao da Silva in the court order released on Tuesday.

Photographing and fingerprinting are "worthy" of gassing millions of people to death? "Worthy" of cruel and medical experiments on helpless prisoners, including and especially children? I guess the Brazilians should know, seeing as they harbored the Nazis for decades after the end of World War II, especially the Angel of Death himself, "Doctor" Josef Mengele. Put up against that, I guess I could see how the learned jurist could overlook the fact that guests to our country murdered 3,000 of our citizens on our soil a couple of years back in an act that goes a lot further to being "worthy" of Nazi atrocities by Brazilian residents than mere fingerprinting and photography.

I guess this incident proves that stupid Nazi analogies aren't limited to the radical leftists in this country, but one would think that government officials from Nazi-sheltering countries might be a little hesitant to toss those stones. In the case of the ridiculous Judge de Silva, one would be wrong.

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Tracked on January 9, 2004 4:02 PM