2010 WOTY nominations open

Victor Steinbok aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM
Fri Jan 7 17:24:41 UTC 2011


My impression is that the definition for "terror baby" is wrong or
incomplete. The way it was initially introduced was that a family goes
to US to give birth to a child who would then become US citizen, but
leaves afterwards, so the child grows up under a different culture. The
idea is that it makes it easier for a full-grown terrorist to enter back
to US by being a citizen. So it's not simply a "terrorist family" that's
involved here, but specifically breeding of a terrorist US citizen. I
don't recall which of the Congressional loons first came up with the
concept--I suspect it was either Virginia Foxx (NC) or Louie Gohmert
(TX), or it was Gohmert backed by Foxx in floor debates. CNN had TX
state rep Debbie Riddle toss the term in her appearance on August 12,
followed by Gohmert the next day--both on Anderson Cooper 360.

Aug. 12
> Riddle appeared on "Anderson Cooper 360" to discuss the threat of
> "terror babies" — a supposed threat in which terrorist organizations
> send pregnant women to the United States to have their children, who
> would be US citizens but trained and raised abroad to be terrorists
> and could enter and leave the US without raising suspicion.

Aug. 13
> Gohmert has been one of the most vocal proponents of the purported
> threat--where terrorist organizations send pregnant women into the
> U.S. so that their children will be American citizens who can enter
> and leave the country at will as they are trained to be terrorists abroad

VS-)
VS-)

On 1/7/2011 9:31 AM, Ben Zimmer wrote:
> The results of the nomination meeting for Word of the Year have been
> posted to the ADS site:
>
> http://www.americandialect.org/index.php/amerdial/nominations_for_2010_word_of_the_year_posted/
>
> The final vote will be held at today at 5:30 p.m.
>
>

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