found this quite astonishing!

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage...tter-joke.html

Why?

A colleague many moons ago once sent a cardboard tube in the post to another pal. On the outside he wrote 'Bomb' and had a wire sticking out one end.

This was in the UK.

He ended up in a fair amount of trouble.

Not quite as much as the couple in the above link...

Security services really can't take any chances on 2 counts - 1 - it could be for real, and 2 - if it was for real and they did nothing, they'd be crucified by the Public.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

And it's not exactly gone unnoticed, you'd think, in the UK and other parts of the World that since 9-11, the US has been understandably tetchy about anything remotely like this...

Frankly, I'd rather a few jokers get shut out than 1 terrorist gets let in - US, UK, or anywhere else for that matter...

Lastly - this is the Sun newspaper we're talking about - who knows what facts got distorted, left out, resequenced, spun, respun, and just, well, 'tweaked'...

I think it's brilliant, slap it up them for being twats...or twits....or whatever a Twitter'er is ...

I'm not cool enough to know the lingo...

Apparently neither do the DHS (unless of course there actually is a "Tweeter" website) so I guess they must be cool as well ...

That someone would be stupid enough to write what he did on such a popular website where a simple word search by whichever authorities would bring up such information. As mentioned I also found it funny they referred to it as Tweeter tho

I have no time for the people who make jokes about bombs. The authorities have to take them at their word; but this looks and reads different. If the quote is correct; I read it to mean he was going to have a good time.

"Free this week, for quick gossip/prep before I go and destroy America"

I can believe that party was what he meant and that he would not have stopped to think that it could be taken out of context.

Thank you for explaining and I agree.

I agree. I've never heard anyone say "destroy" but mean party. It might seem severe, but I agree with the border officials on this one.

If you think this is funny you should see the secret service when the investigate threats against the president.

Sorry, but this is overkill. The USA has become truly paranoid and all the time it continually reacts like this the country becomes more and more an object of ridicule.

But what if they let these people in and then the two took part in acts of terrorism?

I know it's unlikely, but the phrase "better safe than sorry" applies.

There has to be more to this story. Is the Sun considered to be a reliable and balanced source of information in the UK?

Perhaps you should require an IQ above 10 to be admitted under ESTA?

Um... no.