UK won't let Iroquois lacrosse team go to tourney

An American Indian lacrosse team will not be allowed entry into England for the world championship of the sport the Iroquois helped invent unless members accept U.S. or Canadian passports, the British government said Wednesday. The Iroquois Nationals team won't be attending the world championship in Manchester unless the British government reverses its decision and allows them to use passports issued by the Iroquois Confederacy, said Tonya Gonnella Frichner, a lawyer for the team. "They're telling us: 'Go get U.S. passports or Canadian passports,'" Frichner said Wednesday shortly after getting the news. "It's pretty devastating." The team's 23 players — who are all eligible for passports issued by those nations — say that accepting them would be a strike against their identity. The British government's decision was announced hours after the U.S. cleared the team for travel on a one-time waiver at the behest of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. U.S. authorities initially had refused to accept the passports issued by the Iroquois Confederacy, which lack new security features now required for border crossings because of post-Sept. 11 crackdowns on document fraud and illegal immigration. Asked why the State Department had dropped its opposition, spokesman P.J. Crowley said: "There was flexibility there to grant this kind of one-time waiver given the unique circumstances of this particular trip."...more

Don't you think Hillary had a pretty good idea, if not advanced information, that the British would reject the Iroquois-issued passports?