So, I'm sitting here eating dinner and flipping channels. (Living alone, I hate eating and just staring at the wall...seems so pointless and boring.)

Anyway, flipping around brought me to CSPAN-2, where they are showing the hearing today from the Saddam Hussein trial. The judge is trying to get Saddam to give them his identity. Saddam refuses, says he submitted it on paper. Saddam sits down.

They ask the next guy for his identity. "I am an Arab. My identity is my head scarf. They took it from me."

I'm not making this up.

The judge indicates they don't care much for his head scarf, they want to know his name.

"I am an Arab man and without my head scarf, I have no identity."

"Well, you can wear whatever you want in this court," the judge says, "so long as it is decourous, and no one should have taken your head scarf from you. Let's take a five-minute break so you can all put on your headscarfs."

No, I'm not joking. This is not from a Dave Barry column.

I don't mean to be culturally insensitive, I really don't, and I don't mean to insult what is an Arab tradition. But the judge couldn't have said, "Yeah, next time, let them wear their head scarves, but for right now, just get on with it."?

It is interesting to watch a country as it comes to grips with concepts of law and justice.