Austrians Having a Bad Day

There are a couple of news items involving Austrians that aren't shedding a good light on that European country. First, from the Olympics:

Italian prosecutors found more than 100 syringes and 30 packs of drugs, including asthma drugs and antidepressants, in a raid on Austrian Winter Olympics bases, an Italian prosecutor told Austrian television.

They also seized devices for blood testing and blood transfusions in the raid on Saturday on the country's biathlon and cross-country teams, Austrian state television ORF said on its Web site on Monday, quoting Turin prosecutor Raffaele Guariniello.

ORF also quoted another Turin prosecutor, Marcello Maddalena, as saying the raids were coordinated closely with the International Olympic Committee and the World Anti-Doping Agency.

This might explain why the Austrian team was able to ski without actually leaving tracks in the snow.

The other Austrian news involves and author and holocaust denier who has been given 3 years in prison for his beliefs:

Right-wing British historian David Irving pleaded guilty Monday to denying the Holocaust and was sentenced to three years in prison, even after conceding he wrongly said there were no Nazi gas chambers at the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Irving, handcuffed and wearing a navy blue suit, arrived in court carrying a copy of one of his most controversial books _ "Hitler's War," which challenges the extent of the Holocaust.

"I made a mistake when I said there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz," Irving told the court before his sentencing, at which he faced up to 10 years in prison.

Laer takes this one on from his exalted vacation retreat in Hawaii, and he's right. This author may be an idiot, but when you start jailing people for their thoughts, I have real problems with that. It's not a major leap to jailing cartoonists for their cartoons, which would please the radicals a great deal.