"When the Muslims Come... "

Okay I was ranting this morning, just a little, in the space by the door of the Le Pain Quotidien on Little Santa Monica Blvd. in Beverly Hills, putting milk and sugar in my tea and ranting, really just a little, with Debbie and Dale about the spinelessness and cluelessness of our Democratic senators (imagine, allowing John McCain to pretend to stand up bravely to the President when truthfully he's running so hard for President himself, it's next stop Bob Jones U.), and about how yesterday was perhaps the darkest day of my lifetime in this the republic I cherish, and enumerating the manifold sins and wickednesses of the bill.

Nothing too much, just dictatorial powers for the President, amnesty for torturers, abandonment of the writ of habeus, etc.

This naturally, or so it seemed to me, led to how the German Parliament allowed itself to get steamrollered into passage of similar laws by Hitler, who promised to use his new powers, insisted on as necessary, with discretion.

Okay well I went on a little longer than that, with passion and wit and every rhetorical tool at my command but brevity, when a patron, exiting, paused in the doorway and said:

"When the Muslims come, you'll be the first in line. That's what's wrong with the people who take your position."

He was a medium-built man, maybe forty, well-fed but not too heavy, in a green-brown shirt and dark slacks. He shook his head as he walked out onto the sidewalk, heading for a grey Mercedes, seeming to lament the tragic foolishness of some Americans.

"When the Muslims come..."

There are so many things wrong with that, that I had to stop talking.