Making their lists, checking them twice...

Now it can be told: during the recent Olympic Games, the Chinese dictatorship acted...well, like a dictatorship:

"The Chinese government, concerned about the possibility of demonstrations during the Beijing Olympics, created a list of nine U.S. athletes and one assistant coach it thought might cause problems, USA Today reported Thursday."

What they should have been doing was making sure their gymnasts were actually of age, instead of breaking the rules and using girls who sure looked to be under the age of 12.

Congrats, by the way, to the USOC for standing strong on this:

"USOC spokesman Darryl Seibel told USA Today in an e-mail Wednesday that the concerns were "entirely unjustified and unwarranted." "As such, we rejected the request to address this with our athletes," Seibel told the newspaper. "We saw absolutely no need to burden our athletes with this."