This Deserves Our Scorn

Remember Jerry Falwell's disgusting claim after 9/11 that it was in part a punishment from God? I wonder if people will express the same level of outrage at these comments...

Speaking to a large crowd in South Philadelphia tonight, Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan suggested that the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina was divine punishment for the violence America had inflicted on Iraq.

"New Orleans is the first of the cities going to tumble down... unless America changes its course," Farrakhan said.

"It is the wickedness of the people of America and the government of America that is bringing the wrath of God down," he told several hundred people at Tinsley Temple United Methodist Church.

His remarks were enthusiastically received.

I'm ashamed, in this instance, to be a person who grew up near Philly and considers himself a Philadelphian. The people applauding are idiots. I don't even want to try to find a term to describe the speaker.

God Save The Queen

I'm still trying to figure out the U.K. Let's start by looking at this effort to ban "violent Internet porn." Look, I sympathize with the intent behind the law, but I think this guy asks some good questions...

So who gets to decide what goes too far, and how to define big amorphous words like "violent" and "abusive"? Are the Brits going to have a censorship committee that will earnestly discuss if a facial cumshot is allowable or abusive? And if the verdict comes down that that's permitted, how about a bukkake gangbang? Or how about a golden-shower scene — is that potentially abusive enough that it could land you in the pokey for a few years? Will the committee bravely tackle the possible violence in everything from fisting photos to extreme-bondage tapes? And if so, what about the fact that the performers, with maybe one exception in a thousand, are willing participants? They didn't get hurt — in most cases, they got paid!
Doesn't that tell-tale little truth somehow factor into all of this?

If it's not the abusiveness towards the "victim" in front of the camera that counts, but the raw depiction of sexual abuse, period, does that mean that viewing any movie with a rape scene could be enough for a conviction? The Accused? The Color Purple? The Hotel New Hampshire? Go ahead and scoff — and then remind yourself that nannies feel no compunction about going after mainstream movies, or any kind of art. Just ask some of the people who had the temerity to rent the Academy Award-winning movie version of Nobel Prize author Günther Grass's novel The Tin Drum.

(hat tip: Andrew Sullivan) Of course, while they're off protecting the children, they're also being more permissive...

A secondary school is to allow pupils to swear at teachers - as long as they don't do so more than five times in a lesson. A running tally of how many times the f-word has been used will be kept on the board. If a class goes over the limit, they will be 'spoken' to at the end of the lesson.

The astonishing policy, which the school says will improve the behaviour of pupils, was condemned by parents' groups and MPs yesterday. They warned it would backfire.

Parents were advised of the plan, which comes into effect when term starts next week, in a letter from the Weavers School in Wellingborough, Northamptonshire.

Assistant headmaster Richard White said the policy was aimed at 15 and 16-year-olds in two classes which are considered troublesome.

Yes, this should make them far less troublesome. I wonder if they'll compete to see who can curse the quickest.

"Weighty" Legal Issues

No truth to the rumor that Michael Moore is considering a similar action...

A German court has ruled that Mercedes must release a man from a car lease deal after a dispute over whether he was too heavy to drive the luxury vehicle, Bild newspaper reported Tuesday.

Mercedes refused to release the insurance salesman from a lease agreement on his S-320 CDI model, arguing the multiple car breakdowns caused by his weight were insufficient grounds to break the deal.

But the Stuttgart court ruled in favor of the salesman, named only as Frank S., apparently on the grounds that the car should have been able to take his weight.

Frank S. was told that at 160 kg (352 pounds) he weighed twice as much as the average driver, Bild said.

"They told me that I was too fat for the car because the seat was broken," he told Bild, in a story next to a picture of the east German squeezing behind the steering wheel of the model Bild said was worth 65,000 euros.

"I could hardly fit behind the steering wheel ... Then I had to take the car back to the shop for repairs 13 times for 21 different malfunctions in the first 20,000 km."

The 37-year-old said he got fed up and wanted to return the car but Mercedes refused to release him from his lease contract.

Did the guy ever consider losing some weight? Just a thought, but you could skip the second helping of bratwurst, big guy.

The Silly NCAA

One of my favorite things in the world to pick on is the NCAA and its silly rules. Pat Forde, in his column at ESPN ,notes their latest effort to clean up college football with an inane idea that accomplishes absolutely nothing...

This year, the NCAA instituted a rule limiting media guides to 208 pages. This came as a mighty blow to schools such as Texas, Ohio State, Notre Dame and Florida, which published books nearly as thick as the average dictionary.

The purpose was to rein in the schools that had turned media guides into costly, Tolstoy-length tomes. The primary reason media guides had put on more weight than Kirstie Alley was because coaches had turned them into recruiting guides, loading them with dozens of pages of de facto program advertising aimed at teenage studs.

As is so often the case with NCAA rules, the intent was outflanked by the schools' reaction. Instead of trimming the fat, many schools eradicated or drastically reduced the history of their programs and kept the recruiting propaganda.

"This is what the coach wanted," came the apologetic response from one SID trying to explain why his guide had lost so much of its useful information. "And what the coach wants, the coach gets."

The Dash's favorite version of football Pravda belongs to Iowa, where the program has apparently just sprouted out of the cornfields within the last 12 months. (This should come as surprising news to Hayden Fry.) There is no year-by-year record of anything the Hawkeyes did before 2004, no school records, no bowl history.

If the Hawkeyes should start the season, say, 8-0, the media will report that it's the first time since ... uh, well ... we don't know when. If quarterback Drew Tate should throw for 500 yards in a game, it could well be a school record ... but we really wouldn't be able to tell you that for sure.

But let's look at what you do get: 144 pages of recruiting top spin titled "Why Iowa" to start the guide, including 16 consecutive pages trumpeting Iowa's success putting players in the NFL (in case the point didn't sink in, the back page of the guide reiterates the current Hawkeyes in the NFL). There are a mere eight pages on Minister of Information/head coach Kirk Ferentz, including a section entitled "Coach Kirk on Kirk." Eight pages apparently were not enough to include Ferentz's career record. (It's 42-31, in case you're wondering.)

And on page 17, recruits are shown pictures of Bill Cosby and Jackie Joyner-Kersee. The caption's unspoken message: Dear African-American player: See, black people really do come to Iowa City! By next year, we'll try to update this page with a picture of Fifty Cent!

Once again, an effective use of regulations to accomplish nothing. Are we sure the NCAA isn't a government entity?

A Fatwa We Can Applaud

This story needs as much publicity as possible...

A prominent London-based militant Islamic scholar has issued a fatwa, or religious edict, banning suicide operations of the kind carried out by followers of the Al-Qaeda network.

"To my mind, these operations are closer to suicide than to martyrdom-seeking, and they are taboo and not permissible" for a number of reasons, wrote Syrian-born Abdul Menem Mustafa Halimeh, alias Abu Baseer al-Tartussi, on his website.

The Saudi-owned pan-Arab daily Asharq Al-Awsat, which reported Tartussi's fatwa on Saturday, described him as a top ideologue for Islamist militants and said his edict had provoked angry reactions on Islamist websites, with some accusing him of letting down Al-Qaeda followers.

Tartussi, who adheres to the rigorous fundamentalist Salafi school and is the author of several theoretical works, said he was publishing his edict in response to repeated queries over where he stands on suicide attacks.

Among the reasons listed by Tartussi for his stance was that suicide operations "necessarily mean a person killing himself, which violates dozens of (Islamic) religious texts."

They also most often entail "wrongfully killing innocent and sacred souls, be they Muslim or otherwise," he said.

Wow -- those last two paragraphs are well-reasoned. Too bad the terrorists don't understand logic or the religion they supposedly hold sacred. Well, better late than never. We hope this is only the start of people coming to their senses.

The Good Old Days

Bill Simmons' Intern describes law school perfectly...

For those who are unfamiliar with the unbridled joy that is law school, I'd like to let you in on a little secret -- you were once there, and it was called "high school." Forget the workload, the general paranoia, or even the culture shock of class attendance mattering, the most searing impression that law school left upon me was the overarching déjà vu, right down to the personalized lockers, gossipy cliques, musical chair dating scene, and sack lunches. I spent my entire first year waiting to be informed that I was unknowingly taking part in a scientific bio-dome experiment (think MTV's "The 70's House," but more generic).

(hat tip: The Baseball Crank). I do miss law school, but not for those reasons. No, I miss the crazy conservative culture at Harvard.

A Good Response

The artist formerly known as Sprout points us to this tremendous piece, which may be the best response available to some of the more inspid complaints about the camp at Guantanomo...

Thank you for your recent letter criticizing our treatment of the Taliban and Al Qaeda detainees currently held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The administration takes these matters seriously, and your opinion was heard loud and clear here in Washington. You'll be pleased to learn that, thanks to the concerns of citizens like you, we are creating the Terrorist Retraining Program, to be called the "Liberals Accept Responsibility for Killers" program, or LARK for short. In accordance with the guidelines of this new program, we have decided to place one terrorist under your personal care.

Your detainee has been selected and scheduled for transportation to your residence next Monday. Ali Mohammed Ahmed bin Mahmud is to be cared for pursuant to the standards you personally demanded in your letter of admonishment. We will conduct weekly inspections to ensure that your standards of care for Ahmed are commensurate with those you so strongly recommended in your letter.

...Ahmed will not wish to interact with your wife or daughters, except sexually, since he views females as a subhuman form of property. This is a particularly sensitive subject for him. He has been known to show violent tendencies around women who fail to comply with the dress code that he considers appropriate, but I'm sure that over time the females in your household will come to enjoy the anonymity offered by the Bhurka. Just remind them that it is all part of respecting his culture and his religious beliefs.

I'd laugh, but there are some folks who actually think the bigger problem is how we treat the detainees, rather than the detainees themselves and what they would do if released from captivity. Then again, they may not understand that this is a joke.

Katrina

The scenes of devestation in New Orleans are undeniably heart-rending. There is little I can add at this point -- all I'm doing is watching the scenes. The breaking news feed from the AP and the New Orleans Times-Picayune (and the Times has evacuated its building, as noted by Vodkapundit) are here.

Michelle Malkin, Instapundit, Hugh Hewitt and others all have links to places offering aid. NZ Bear has a full list of the blogs covering the storm.

Giving aid is one important thing we can do. Giving blood would be another. And let's all pray -- because even if you're not certain that there is a higher power, the folks in New Orleans and the surrounding environs could use one.

Hey, It's W.'s Fault!

Good news -- at least one person wants to blame President Bush for what Katrina's about to do to Louisiana.

I love some of the rationale here -- apparently Bush could have reversed decades of global warming in his five years such that we wouldn't have a Category 5 storm bearing down on New Orleans. Yeah, that makes sense. As some folks noted in the comments, blaming the tax cuts for cuts in spending on preparedness makes about as much sense as treating Al Sharpton as a legitimate Presidential candidate.

If the Left is this stupid, we don't need to wonder why they lose elections. We need to wonder how they can remember to breathe regularly.

Oh What A Knight

This story may speak for itself...

Police had no suspects Sunday in the shooting of rap mogul Suge Knight at an MTV awards party — a typical development in the street-justice world of rap.

Knight, 40, was shot once in the upper right leg shortly after midnight Saturday at a star-studded bash hosted by Kanye West. He was scheduled for surgery to remove a bullet from his leg and repair a broken bone.

A police report described the shooter only as a black male wearing a pink shirt. "We are interviewing all the witnesses we can to hopefully develop a composite," Miami Beach police spokesman Bobby Hernandez said.

He told The Miami Herald that the investigation was being hampered by witnesses' unwillingness to talk. "We don't have any physical description. We don't know how many subjects were involved, which is mind boggling, with all those people around," Hernandez said.

A group of Knight's friends waiting at the hospital said he was alert and talkative after the shooting. His attorneys told hospital officials not to release any information on his condition, said hospital spokeswoman Laurie Oliva. Knight's attorney in Los Angeles, Dermot Givens, did not return a telephone call.

West's party Saturday night at the Shore Club hotel in Miami Beach was one of the most coveted invites of the evening. A throng gathered trying to get in, and revelers mingled in the courtyard while celebs including Jessica Alba, Eddie Murphy, Paris Hilton, Game and The Black Eyed Peas were entertained in the VIP room.

Several witnesses said Knight was sitting at a VIP table when a man walked up and opened fire. No one else was injured. Screaming guests fled the party, streaming outside or taking cover in other parts of the hotel.

At the awards ceremony Sunday night, one rap star downplayed the shooting.

"I don't think that what happened was any different than at any other event where you have a lot of people," said David Banner. "It's tragic that it happened and that the media magnified this so much."

Others felt differently.

"It's disturbing that someone can let off six shots in a packed club and can escape without being arrested," said Elliott Wilson, editor in chief of the rap magazine XXL. "The hip-hop community doesn't trust the police to confide info to them, and in turn the police have done little to make us feel like they give a damn about our safety. It's a vicious cycle."

Let me get this straight -- the people being blamed for what happened here are (a) the media and (b) the cops.

Look, I'm willing to blame the media for just about anything, but a shooting taking place at a celebrity-filled bash during celebrations for a major awards show (which are basically an excuse for celebrities to get together and bask in media coverage anyway) is news. They can ignore a lot of things (and they do), but this would be tough to forget.

As for blaming the cops, this is a load of utter hooey. I realize the cops haven't arrested the killers of other rap stars, but withholding information from them is more likely to dissuade them from taking these crimes seriously.

With that being said... no one has reported on the most important question. Was Jessica Alba okay?