I am Not Making This Up: New York DMV Bans Anti-Osama Plate

I think I understand why the New York DMV is protecting the good name of Osama bin Laden. That's not the same as agreeing with what they're doing.

Arno Herwerth, a retired NYPD sergeant from Hauppauge, NY, has been billed for his $68 ($43 over standard cost) for vanity license plates saying "GETOSAMA." He's got the plates, but not the registration.

The New York Post quotes DMV spokesman Nick Cantiello's explanation for refusing to update the sergeant's vehicle registration. The " 'GETOSAMA' plates violate a regulation that bans any tag that is 'obscene, lewd, lascivious, derogatory to a particular ethnic or other group or patently offensive.' "

Why were the plates stamped and sent? "The plates were inadvertently given out," and the agency expects Herwerth to return them.

Funny thing. Herwerth pointed out that for about two years, "the DMV did nothing about a controversial vanity plate they issued him - 'STOPCCRB,' a dig at the Citizens Complaint Review Board, the city agency that monitors the conduct of NYPD cops."

On the surface, this sounds like whoever is enforcing the rules is a few sheets short of a quarterly report: but the NY DMV is actually being perfectly reasonable, by their standards.

The rules state that license plates can't have words that are "obscene, lewd, lascivious, derogatory to a particular ethnic or other group or patently offensive." "GETOSAMA" is almost certainly offensive to the mastermind of the 9/11 attack.

And, since he's from a non-European ethnic group, "GETOSAMA" might, by a (wild) stretch of the imagination, be considered offensive to everyone between Turkey and India. Except for the Jews, but they don't matter in this case.

Given the personal dig at a master terrorist, who is part of an ethnic group that apparently has the right to be hypersensitive these days, what the DMV makes sense.

If you accept the insane PC standards that are considered "normal" in some circles.

Out here, I think it's somewhere between absurd and obscene that the New York State DMV is protecting the good name of a terrorist with a $25 million price on his head.

But, what do I know? I don't even live in a "flyover state." Minnesota is well north of the major Los Angeles-New York-Washington air routes. We don't, generally, even see airliners from Chicago, unless they're on a trans-polar route.

And, I've got this peculiar idea that the people who killed about 3,000 people in the New York Trade Center

• Aren't nice
• Aren't through killing infidels
• And should be stopped

Can you imagine an American during WWII being forbidden to criticize Hitler?