Wikipedia banhammers Church of $cientology.

If you've ever read any of Wikipedia's discussion pages for any Church of $cientology, you would totally understand.

In an unprecedented move, Wikipedia has banned edits from an entire religion — the Church of Scientology.

After four months of internal discussion, Wikipedia's top administrators decided Thursday to block Scientology-affiliated computers from changing items on any part of the free online encyclopedia, reports the British tech blog The Register.

Wikipedia famously lets almost anyone make changes to almost any article. Troublesome individuals have been blocked from editing — among them virulently anti-Scientology activists who altered pages relating to the religion — but this is the first time a religious organization has been blocked.

The encyclopedia's administrators found that Scientology computers had been repeatedly changing more than 400 pages related to the Church, deleting negative references and adding positive ones. The volume of changes was overwhelming administrators' ability to reverse them, hence the block.

Representatives of the Church of Scientology did not reply to FOXNews.com's requests for comment.

Wikipedia matches specific Internet Protocol (IP) addresses — every device on the Internet has one — with certain users, and tweaks its servers to prevent those machines gaining edit access. Every IP address linked to the Church of Scientology is now banned from editing.

"All IP addresses owned or operated by the Church of Scientology and its associates, broadly interpreted, are to be blocked," read a statement on Wikipedia, according to WikiNews. "Individual editors may request IP block exemption if they wish to contribute from the blocked IP addresses."
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When inciting hate goes beyond just words.

Frank Schaeffer, former big-wig in the Religious Right movement during the 70's and 80's, was on Rachel Maddow's show discussing the type of language that people like Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, and Mark Levin use to rile up their base. As Schaeffer puts it, all it takes is one person with a screw loose to take things a bit too far, and that these pundits know that. We saw it with the Unitarian Church shooting in Tennessee where the gunman specifically wanted to kill "liberals" because of the type of rhetoric spewed by Hannity and O'Reilly.

Even in this news piece we can see this kind of doublespeak being used, condemning the actual killing, but still promoting the outcome.

Abortion opponents were swift to condemn Tiller's shooting death Sunday during church services in Wichita. Kansans for Life and Operation Rescue, which is also based in Kansas, said 51-year-old Scott Roeder, who is being held without bail one count of first-degree murder and two counts of aggravated assault, did not belong or donate to either group.

'Operation Rescue condemned the killing as vigilantism and "a cowardly act." But its founder, Randall Terry, stressed that the anti-abortion movement should not tone down its rhetoric. He said the gunman was wrong to kill Tiller, 67, but that abortion opponents bear no responsibility for the action.

Tiller was "a mass murderer and horrifically, he reaped what he sowed," Terry told the National Press Club in Washington.
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Everyone knows witches hate brooms.

This is why I hate religion and all other types of superstitious voodoo bullshit.

Christian Eshiett was a rambunctious pre-teen who spent a lot of time cavorting with his friends in southern Nigeria. He would skip school and run away from home for days, frustrating his grandfather, who oversaw the boy's care.

"I beat him severely with canes until they broke, yet he never shed a tear," said Eshiett Nelson Eshiett, 76. "One day, I took a broom to hit him and he started crying. Then I knew he was possessed by demons. ... Nigerian witches are terrified of brooms."

From that day two years ago, Christian, now 14, was branded a witch. The abuse intensified.

"They would take my clothes off, tie me up and beat me," he told CNN in a telephone interview.

The teen is one of the so-called witch children in Eket, a city in oil-rich Akwa Ibom state of Nigeria.

They are blamed for causing illness, death and destruction, prompting some communities to put them through harrowing punishments to "cleanse" them of their supposed magical powers.

"Children accused of witchcraft are often incarcerated in churches for weeks on end and beaten, starved and tortured in order to extract a confession," said Gary Foxcroft, program director of Stepping Stones Nigeria, a nonprofit that helps alleged witch children in the region.

Many of those targeted have traits that make them stand out, including learning disabilities, stubbornness and ailments such as epilepsy, he added.

The issue of "child witches" is soaring in Nigeria and other parts of the world, Foxcroft said.

The states of Akwa Ibom and Cross River have about 15,000 children branded as witches, and most of them end up abandoned and abused on the streets, he said.

Christian ran away from home and wandered around for two years with other children similarly accused. He said they stole, begged for food and performed menial jobs to survive.

The plight of "child witches" is raising concern among aid organizations, including the United Nations.

"It is a growing issue worldwide, among not just African communities, but in countries such as Nepal as well," said Jeff Crisp, head of policy development and evaluation for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. "We are trying to see whether it is a neglected protected issue."

Belief in witchcraft thrives worldwide. About 1,000 people accused of being witches in Gambia were locked in detention centers in March and forced to drink a dangerous hallucinogenic potion, human rights organization Amnesty International said.

In 2005, relatives of an 8-year-old Angolan girl living in England were convicted of torturing her for being a "witch," according to the Times Online.

Pastors have been accused of worsening the problem by claiming to have powers to recognize and exorcise "child witches," sometimes for a fee, aid workers said.

But some are true believers, such as one minister in Lagos, Nigeria. He pinpoints children affected by witchcraft for free, he said.

"Sometimes, we get a dream that shows us a certain person is suffering from witchcraft," said the Rev. Albert Aina, a senior pastor at Four Square Gospel Church. "Sometimes, you have a child who has inexplicable body marks because of struggling in the night. They are easy to identify, but why charge when you have been given a gift by God?" Aina said.

Once a child is branded a witch, the stigma can last forever.

Christian was reunited with his grandfather, a former theater instructor at a university in Nigeria. Eshiett said he let his son's child return home because he loves him and he advocates for youth education.

But, he added, he does not think Christian has been or can be freed from witchcraft.

"When you are possessed, you are possessed; no one can deliver you from Satan," Eshiett said, adding that his grandson is a witch because he still exhibits unruly behavior and does not take education seriously.

Aid organizations acknowledge that the belief is acceptable and popular in some communities.

"It is not the belief in witchcraft that we are concerned about," Foxcroft said. "We acknowledge people's right to hold this belief on the condition that this does not lead to child abuse."

Foxcroft, whose documentary, "Saving Africa's Witch Children," was broadcast last year, spoke to a U.N. panel on the issue in April.

The aid worker said he is planning a global conference in 2010 and public awareness campaigns, including addressing the issue in Nigerian movies. The nation's film industry, dubbed Nollywood, is a popular form of entertainment in African countries.

Government officials also have joined the fight.

Akwa Ibom recently added a clause into the Child Rights Act, saying that anyone found guilty of branding a child a witch would get up to 12 years in prison.

"This is groundbreaking, and Stepping Stones Nigeria applauds the Akwa Ibom state government for this," Foxcroft said.

But, he added, there is more work to be done, and other groups, especially churches, have to team up to resolve the problem.

"The role of the international Christian community in this cannot be underestimated," Foxcroft said. "Unfortunately, the fact remains that this belief system is being spread by so-called Christians."

CNN's attempts to reach Akwa Ibom state officials through phone calls and e-mails were unsuccessful. A Nigerian federal communications official declined to comment.
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Good Christians = Torture Supportors?

According to a recent Pew survey, those who regularly attend church are more likely to support torture techniques. Guess they've been reading a lot of the Old Testament.

More than half of people who attend services at least once a week -- 54 percent -- said the use of torture against suspected terrorists is "often" or "sometimes" justified. Only 42 percent of people who "seldom or never" go to services agreed, according to the analysis released Wednesday by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

White evangelical Protestants were the religious group most likely to say torture is often or sometimes justified -- more than six in 10 supported it. People unaffiliated with any religious organization were least likely to back it. Only four in 10 of them did.

The analysis is based on a Pew Research Center survey of 742 American adults conducted April 14-21. It did not include analysis of groups other than white evangelicals, white non-Hispanic Catholics, white mainline Protestants and the religiously unaffiliated, because the sample size was too small.

The president of the National Association of Evangelicals, Leith Anderson, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The survey asked: "Do you think the use of torture against suspected terrorists in order to gain important information can often be justified, sometimes be justified, rarely be justified, or never be justified?"

Roughly half of all respondents -- 49 percent -- said it is often or sometimes justified. A quarter said it never is.

The religious group most likely to say torture is never justified was Protestant denominations -- such as Episcopalians, Lutherans and Presbyterians -- categorized as "mainline" Protestants, in contrast to evangelicals. Just over three in 10 of them said torture is never justified. A quarter of the religiously unaffiliated said the same, compared with two in 10 white non-Hispanic Catholics and one in eight evangelicals.
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The final stand at the Texas schoolboard meeting.

By way of Andrew Sullivan's magnificent blog I was brought aware of a Newsweek article from his good friend, and one of my favorite debaters, Christopher Hitchens. Hitchens makes some great points. The evangelical community is a huge liability for the GOP. Do you really want a party linked to crackpot wackos that think, the basic equivalent of, the Earth being flat? I can't think of a better way to disengage the enlightened and thoughtful of your party than to interject the most drastically ignorant fringe that one could imagine.

Mention the name "Texas" and the word "schoolbook" to many people of a certain age (such as my own) and the resulting free association will come up with the word "depository" and the image of Lee Harvey Oswald crouching on its sixth floor. In Dallas for the Christian Book Expo recently, I had a view of Dealey Plaza and its most famous building from my hotel room, so the suggestion was never far from my mind.

But last week Texas and schoolbooks meant something else altogether when the state Board of Education, in a muddled decision, rejected a state science curriculum that required teachers to discuss the "strengths and weaknesses" of the theory of evolution. Instead, the board allowed "all sides" of scientific theories to be taught. The vote was watched as something more than a local or bookish curiosity. Just as the Christian Book Expo is one of the largest events on the nation's publishing calendar, so the Lone Star State commands such a big share of the American textbook market that many publishers adapt to the standards that it sets, and sell the resulting books to non-Texans as well.

In many ways, this battle can be seen as the last stand of the Protestant evangelicals with whom I was mingling and debating. It's been a rather dismal time for them lately. In the last election they barely had a candidate after Mike Huckabee dropped out and, some would say, not much of one before that. Many Republicans now see them as more of a liability than an asset. As a proportion of the population they are shrinking, and in ethical terms they find themselves more and more in the wilderness of what some of them morosely called, in conversation with me, a "post-Christian society." Perhaps more than any one thing, the resounding courtroom defeat that they suffered in December 2005 in the conservative district of Dover, Pa., where the "intelligent design" plaintiffs were all but accused of fraud by a Republican judge, has placed them on the defensive. Thus, even if the Texas board had defiantly voted to declare evolution to be questionable and debatable, its decision could still have spelled the end of a movement rather than the revival of one.

Yet I find myself somewhat drawn in by the quixotic idea that we should "teach the argument." I am not a scientist, and all that I knew as an undergraduate about the evolution debate came from the study of two critical confrontations. The first was between Thomas Huxley (Darwin's understudy, ancestor of Aldous and coiner of the term "agnostic") and Bishop Samuel Wilberforce (third son of the great Christian emancipator William) at the Oxford University Museum in 1860. The second was the "Monkey Trial" in Dayton, Tenn., in 1925, which pitted the giant of Protestant fundamentalism, William Jennings Bryan, against Clarence Darrow and H. L. Mencken. Every educated person should know the arguments that were made in these transatlantic venues.

So by all means let's "be honest with the kids," as Dr. Don McLeroy, the chairman of the Texas education board, wants us to be. The problem is that he is urging that the argument be taught, not in a history or in a civics class, but in a biology class. And one of his supporters on the board, Ken Mercer, has said that evolution is disproved by the absence of any transitional forms between dogs and cats. If any state in the American union gave equal time in science class to such claims, it would certainly make itself unique in the world (perhaps no shame in that). But it would also set a precedent for the sharing of the astronomy period with the teaching of astrology, or indeed of equal time as between chemistry and alchemy. Less boring perhaps, but also much less scientific and less educational.

The Texas anti-Darwin stalwarts also might want to beware of what they wish for. The last times that evangelical Protestantism won cultural/ political victories—by banning the sale of alcohol, prohibiting the teaching of evolution and restricting immigration from Catholic countries—the triumphs all turned out to be Pyrrhic. There are some successes that are simply not survivable. If by any combination of luck and coincidence any religious coalition ever did succeed in criminalizing abortion, say, or mandating school prayer, it would swiftly become the victim of a backlash that would make it rue the day. This will apply with redoubled force to any initiative that asks the United States to trade its hard-won scientific preeminence against its private and unofficial pieties. This country is so constituted that no one group, and certainly no one confessional group, is able to dictate its own standards to the others. There are days when I almost wish the fundamentalists could get their own way, just so that they would find out what would happen to them.
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You can lead an Islamic horse to water...

SO, this is what the men and women of the armed services have died for? Great. Awesome. IF this is what democracy in the Islamic world means, what the fuck is the point? Why not just let the Taliban rule? It would basically have the same result.

What am I talking about? A recent Afghanistan law that states that a woman is required to have sex with her husband every fourth night if he so desires.

As first lady, senator and then Democratic candidate for president, Hillary Clinton was vocal in her fight for the rights of women in Afghanistan.

But, as President Obama's secretary of state, Clinton now finds herself in the uncomfortable position of watching as the U.S.-backed Afghan president signs a law that critics say gives Shiite men the right to rape their wives.

International criticism pressure forced President Hamid Karzai to say Saturday that the law is under review, and he has spoken to Clinton about it.

The developments come as Obama seeks NATO support in Europe for his plan to ramp up the war against terrorists in Afghanistan. Back at home in Washington, administration officials have struggled this week with how to respond to Karzai's signing of the so-called Shia Family Law without debate in the Afghan parliament. The law's most controversial provisions address sexual intercourse in marriage.

"As long as the husband is not traveling, he has the right to have sexual intercourse with his wife every fourth night," Article 132 of the law says. "Unless the wife is ill or has any kind of illness that intercourse could aggravate, the wife is bound to give a positive response to the sexual desires of her husband."
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Yea! for progress!

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GOP oreinted, social conservative, Christian states have higher porn consumption.

From Andrew Sullivan's blog:

Surprise! There's a significant correlation between consumption of online porn and Christianism:

Eight of the top 10 pornography consuming states gave their electoral votes to John McCain in last year's presidential election – Florida and Hawaii were the exceptions. While six out of the lowest 10 favoured Barack Obama. Residents of 27 states that passed laws banning gay marriages boasted 11% more porn subscribers than states that don't explicitly restrict gay marriage...

States where a majority of residents agreed with the statement "I have old-fashioned values about family and marriage," bought 3.6 more subscriptions per thousand people than states where a majority disagreed. A similar difference emerged for the statement "AIDS might be God's punishment for immoral sexual behaviour."

Utah is the country's single biggest consumer of online porn. You've got to love those Mormons.
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nothing after the jump

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Take back the country. One dead liberal at a time.

Rush Limbaugh gave a roaring and invigorating speech yesterday. Calling, numerously, on his creed that Obama wants socialism and to destroy capitalism. He called for caonservatives to "take back" America and defended his remarks desiring Obama to fail with more asinine assertions.

"We conservatives have not done a good enough job of just laying out basically who we are, because we make the mistake of assuming that people know. What they know is largely incorrect, based on the way we're portrayed in pop culture, in the drive-by media, by the Democrat party," the conservative talk show host told a mostly young crowd of energized supporters.

"We want every American to be the best he or she chooses to be. We recognize that we are all individuals. We love and revere our founding documents, the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. We believe that the preamble of the Constitution contains an inarguable truth, that we are all endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights, among them life, liberty, freedom -- and the pursuit of happiness," he said, pausing several times for enthusiastic applause.

Really? Then why the attempts to mar the constitution by injecting religious dogma into its foundations? Why has he defended Bush's curtailing the law of the United States by issuing warrant-less wiretaps on American civilians? Also, why is he citing the Declaration of Independence while talking about the Constitution?

Limbaugh used his self-described "first national address," which ran more than an hour longer than his allotted 20 minutes, to accuse President Obama of inspiring fear in Americans in order to push a liberal agenda of "big government."

"He wants people in fear, angst and crisis, fearing the worst each and every day, because that clears the decks for President Obama and his pals to come in with the answers, which are abject failures, historically shown and demonstrated. Doesn't matter. They'll have control of it when it's all over. And that's what they want," Limbaugh said.

What the the fuck has Rush been smoking? What has been the GOP modus operandi for the entire Bush administration? Fear mongering. Fear mongering over bogeymen and that they are coming for you in the night. Obama, on the other hand, is talking realistically about a very real disaster that is unfolding right in front of our eyes: economic collapse. Is it fear mongering to tell a frostbite victim that they may very well lose an extremity, or is it simply addressing the realities of a dire situation? Apparently, Rush can't distinguish the two, so he simply goes into rhetoric attack mode.

Limbaugh praised Obama as one of the most gifted politicians he has seen, but said, "It just breaks my heart that he does not use these extraordinary talents and gifts to motivate and inspire the American people to be the best they can be. He's doing just the opposite."

Yeah, really. What an asshole Obama is. Trying to inspire people to volunteer to help their communities, to conserve resources, to fix their failing infrastructure and strengthen the country as a whole. What a bunch of bullshit. Why doesn't he inspire us to be the best that we can be, like Bush did. Y'know, where he tells us to go out and shop till we drop so the terrorists don't win. Or maybe Rudy Giuliani who openly mocked (to much applause) community organizers that take active roles in trying to better their community.

Limbaugh's rollicking speech came the day after Obama supporters put out a political ad implying that the conservative radio host has become the de facto head of the Republican Party in the absence of a clear GOP leader.

The ad argues that the Republican leadership in Congress is following Limbaugh's lead in opposing the Obama administration's stimulus package.

"So who are Republican leaders listening to?" the announcer asks, before the 30-second ad cuts abruptly to footage of Limbaugh saying, "I want him [Obama] to fail."

It was paid for by Americans United for Change and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees union, two groups that supported Obama during the election and are advocating for his agenda.

Limbaugh doesn't speak for all Republicans or conservatives. Copies of the American Conservative magazine with the headline "How radio wrecks the right" were distributed to CPAC attendees, Preston said.

"There is some criticism of Rush Limbaugh. Some people think he is a reactionary," Preston said.

Well, no shit. All he does is piss and moan about how liberals are destroying everything. Even when a matter is clearly the fault of the GOP, Rush will still spin it as created by liberal agendas and ideals. It's like during the very beginning of Obama's term, Limbaugh constantly deduced that falling stock prices was because of Obama. Yeah, because it's not like we were in a recession with dozens of banks falling, a housing bubble run amok collapsing, and record high unemployment continuing to escalate. None of that mattered. It's all because of Obama.

Limbaugh defended his remark about wanting Obama to fail, comparing it to his desire to see the Arizona Cardinals "fail" in this year's Super Bowl game against the Pittsburgh Steelers.

"This notion that I want the president to fail, folks, this shows you a sign of the problem we've got," he said.

"What is so strange about being honest and saying, I want Barack Obama to fail if his mission is to restructure and reform this country so that capitalism and individual liberty are not its foundation? Why would I want that to succeed?" he said, bringing the crowd once again to its feet.

"Did the Democrats want the war in Iraq to fail? Well, they certainly did. And they not only wanted the war in Iraq to fail, they proclaimed it a failure."
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Except that's not at all how it was. Those of us on the left didn't want Iraq to fail, we feared that it would. We feared that the monetary and human life costs would not be worth the outcome and that it would only further destabilize the region. Guess who the fuck was right? I'll give you a hint: Cheney said we would be greeted as liberators.

Those on the Left wanted Hans Blix and the UN to finish their assessment. The Right wanted to go rushing on in the Iraq and kick some ass. Hans Blix was prematurely pulled from Iraq, not allowed to finish his inquiry, and troops were soon dispatched. The notion that anyone on the Left wanted Iraq to fail simply isn't true. Instead, that was the tagline used by Rush Limbaugh to demonize liberals as hating our troops and despising America. He uses his own twisted logic to justify further twisted logic.

If this really is the path of the GOP - by listening to the sheer amount of GOP senators that go onto and then harp the words of Hannity and Limbaugh, I can only deduce that it is - then the nation should brace for even more instances like the shooting death of Arkansas DNC Chairman, Bill Gwatney.

The chairman of the Arkansas Democratic Party died Wednesday, about four hours after a shooting at the party's headquarters, police said.

Chairman Bill Gwatney died at 3:59 Wednesday afternoon after a gunman entered his Little Rock office and shot him several times in the upper body, Little Rock Police Lt. Terry Hastings said.
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It was never clearly concluded what the motivation was, as the shooter was later killed by police after a high speed chase.

Johnson's relatives could offer no insight. A sister said he normally voted Democratic.
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Except that turns out to be absolute bullshit.

Is there any chance political passion played a role? It is far too early to say. But, for the record, we obtained Johnson's voting record in White County. He was a regular voter, casting ballots 13 times since November 2000. He voted Republican more often than not in primary balloting. He voted Republican in 2002 and 2004 primaries and the 2008 presidential primary. He voted in the Democratic primary and Democratic runoff primary in 2006. There was no record of a vote in this year's May primary on either side.
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Voting in Democratic Primaries doesn't mean the guy was a "mixed voter." Limbaugh and many in the GOP (as well some for the DNC, such as pinhead extraordinaire Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos) have called for voting in opposition primaries to beef up votes for the weaker candidate. However, it seems that we will never know exactly. what the motivation was, but it does seem odd that he stormed into the DNC headquarters and shot Gwatney for no apparent reason.

Then there is the more direct and clearly motivated attack on the Tennessee Unitarian Church.

It was a simple plan, he wrote, borne out of hopelessness but rooted in patriotism.

“The future looks bleak,” the ex-soldier lamented. “I’m absolutely fed up! So I thought I’d do something good for this country — kill Democrats ‘til (sic) the cops kill me.”

With what he believed to be his last pen strokes, Jim David Adkisson urged other suicidal soldiers against the “liberalism that’s destroying America” to leave their own trail of carnage behind.

“I’d like to encourage other like-minded people to do what I’ve done,” Adkisson wrote. “If life ain’t worth living anymore, don’t just kill yourself. Do something for your country before you go. Go kill liberals.”

[...]

n his manifesto, Adkisson deemed his rampage part “political protest” and part “symbolic killing.”

“This was a hate crime,” he wrote. “Liberals are a pest like termites, millions of them … the only way we can rid ourselves of this evil is kill them in the streets, kill them where they gather.”
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Police found right-wing political books, brass knuckles, empty shotgun shell boxes and a handgun in the Powell home of a man who said he attacked a church in order to kill liberals "who are ruining the country," court records show.

[...]

Inside the house, officers found "Liberalism is a Mental Health Disorder" by radio talk show host Michael Savage, "Let Freedom Ring" by talk show host Sean Hannity, and "The O'Reilly Factor," by television talk show host Bill O'Reilly.
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So, what exactly do the nation's favorite mainstream conservative casters say that could spur such attacks?

“My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building.”

Vester: You say you’d rather not talk to liberals at all?

Coulter: I think a baseball bat is the most effective way these days.

So for those of you who haven’t read any of my five best-selling books: Liberals are driven by Satan and lie constantly.

“I’d say something about John Edwards, but if you use the word ‘faggot’, you have to go to rehab.”

“We need somebody to put rat poisoning in Justice Stevens’ creme brulee. … That’s just a joke, for you in the media.”

“Patriotic Americans don’t have to become dangerous psychotics like liberals, but they could at least act like men. “

“I don’t know if he’s [Bill Clinton] gay. But [former Vice President] Al Gore — total fag.”

They say there's a word of truth behind every joke. The fact that Coulter thinks beating our political leaders and those with differing points of view is "funny" shows how much of a fucking lunatic she is. But why stop there, there's plenty more to choose from.

Ruch Limbaugh:

“They are 12 percent of the population. Who the hell cares?” [To a caller who said black people need to be heard.]

“…If you want to know what America used to be — and a lot of people wish it still were — then you listen to Strom Thurmond.”

“I tell people don’t kill all the liberals. Leave enough so we can have two on every campus — living fossils — so we will never forget what these people stood for.”

“Because we are sympathetic, we are compassionate people, we have responded by letting our government literally feed these people to the point of obesity. At least here in America, didn’t teach them how to fish, we gave them the fish. Didn’t teach them how to butcher a — slaughter a cow to get the butter, we gave them the butter. The real bloat here, as we know, is in — is in government.”

You have to slaughter cows to get butter?

Pat Robertson (founder of the Christian Coalition with over 1.7 million members)

“How can there be peace when drunkards, drug dealers, communists, atheists, New Age worshippers of Satan, secular humanists, oppressive dictators, greedy money changers, revolutionary assassins, adulterers, and homosexuals are on top?”

“When lawlessness is abroad in the land, the same thing will happen here that happened in Nazi Germany. Many of those people involved with Adolph Hitler were Satanists, many of them were homosexuals–the two things seem to go together.”

“Feminism encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism, and become lesbians.”

“Maybe we need a very small nuke thrown off on Foggy Bottom to shake things up.” [Speaking about bombing the State Department]

Michael Savage:

“I can guarantee you [liberals], you wouldn’t be in business too long. I can guarantee you you’d be arrested for sedition within six months of my taking power. I’d have you people licking lead paint, what you did to this country.”

“Carl Levin and Ted Kennedy and Hillary Clinton, The New Yorker, CBS have destroyed the war effort against terror. And if, God forbid, a suitcase bomb goes off you’ll know who to blame. I’m — hey I’m not going to mince words, there’s no grey zone here. It’s black and white, it’s them versus us and the enemy within on their side.”

“My fear is that if the Democrats win [in the November midterm elections], and I’m afraid that they might, you’re going to see America melt down faster that you could ever imagine. It will happen overnight, and it could lead to the breakup of the United States of America, the way the Soviet Union broke up.”

Bill O'Reilly:

“Everybody got it? Dissent, fine; undermining, you’re a traitor. Got it? So, all those clowns over at the liberal radio network, we could incarcerate them immediately. Will you have that done, please? Send over the FBI and just put them in chains, because they, you know, they’re undermining everything and they don’t care, couldn’t care less.”

“Americans will respect your beliefs if you just keep them private.“

“You want to have two guys making out in front of your 4-year-old? It’s OK with them. A guy smoking a joint, blowing the smoke into your little kid’s face? OK with them. And I’m not exaggerating here. This is exactly what the secular movement stands for.”

“Conservative people tend to see the world in black and white terms, good and evil. Liberals see grays. In any talk format, you have to pound home a strong point of view. If you’re not providing controversy and excitement, people won’t listen, or watch.”

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Why scientists don't care to debate "Intelligent Design."

In a bit of intellectual smacktalk, Nicholas Gotelli, a Biology professor at University of Vermont, delivered a scathing rebuttal to a request for him to debate at the Discovery Institute. The DI is a conservative think tank (and I use the term "think" very liberally here) that is ardently seeking to institute creationism into the science curriculum of public schools. Gotelli explains why he, and many others in the scientific community, have no interest in such a public fiasco.

Dear Professor Gotelli,

I saw your op-ed in the Burlington Free Press and appreciated your support of free speech at UVM. In light of that, I wonder if you would be open to finding a way to provide a campus forum for a debate about evolutionary science and intelligent design. The Discovery Institute, where I work, has a local sponsor in Burlington who is enthusiastic to find a way to make this happen. But we need a partner on campus. If not the biology department, then perhaps you can suggest an alternative.

Ben Stein may not be the best person to single-handedly represent the ID side. As you're aware, he's known mainly as an entertainer. A more appropriate alternative or addition might be our senior fellows David Berlinski or Stephen Meyer, respectively a mathematician and a philosopher of science. I'll copy links to their bios below. Wherever one comes down in the Darwin debate, I think we can all agree that it is healthy for students to be exposed to different views--in precisely the spirit of inviting controversial speakers to campus, as you write in your op-ed.

I'm hoping that you would be willing to give a critique of ID at such an event, and participate in the debate in whatever role you feel comfortable with.

A good scientific backdrop to the discussion might be Dr. Meyer's book that comes out in June from HarperCollins, "Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design."

On the other hand, Dr. Belinski may be a good choice since he is a critic of both ID and Darwinian theory.

Would it be possible for us to talk more about this by phone sometime soon?

With best wishes,
David Klinghoffer
Discovery Institute




Dear Dr. Klinghoffer:

Thank you for this interesting and courteous invitation to set up a debate about evolution and creationism (which includes its more recent relabeling as "intelligent design") with a speaker from the Discovery Institute. Your invitation is quite surprising, given the sneering coverage of my recent newspaper editorial that you yourself posted on the Discovery Institute's website:

http://www.evolutionnews.org/2009/02/

However, this kind of two-faced dishonesty is what the scientific community has come to expect from the creationists.

Academic debate on controversial topics is fine, but those topics need to have a basis in reality. I would not invite a creationist to a debate on campus for the same reason that I would not invite an alchemist, a flat-earther, an astrologer, a psychic, or a Holocaust revisionist. These ideas have no scientific support, and that is why they have all been discarded by credible scholars. Creationism is in the same category.

Instead of spending time on public debates, why aren't members of your institute publishing their ideas in prominent peer-reviewed journals such as Science, Nature, or the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences? If you want to be taken seriously by scientists and scholars, this is where you need to publish. Academic publishing is an intellectual free market, where ideas that have credible empirical support are carefully and thoroughly explored. Nothing could possibly be more exciting and electrifying to biology than scientific disproof of evolutionary theory or scientific proof of the existence of a god. That would be Nobel Prize winning work, and it would be eagerly published by any of the prominent mainstream journals.

"Conspiracy" is the predictable response by Ben Stein and the frustrated creationists. But conspiracy theories are a joke, because science places a high premium on intellectual honesty and on new empirical studies that overturn previously established principles. Creationism doesn't live up to these standards, so its proponents are relegated to the sidelines, publishing in books, blogs, websites, and obscure journals that don't maintain scientific standards.

Finally, isn't it sort of pathetic that your large, well-funded institute must scrape around, panhandling for a seminar invitation at a little university in northern New England? Practicing scientists receive frequent invitations to speak in science departments around the world, often on controversial and novel topics. If creationists actually published some legitimate science, they would receive such invitations as well.

So, I hope you understand why I am declining your offer. I will wait patiently to read about the work of creationists in the pages of Nature and Science. But until it appears there, it isn't science and doesn't merit an invitation.

In closing, I do want to thank you sincerely for this invitation and for your posting on the Discovery Institute Website. As an evolutionary biologist, I can't tell you what a badge of honor this is. My colleagues will be envious.

Sincerely yours,

Nick Gotelli

P.S. I hope you will forgive me if I do not respond to any further e-mails from you or from the Discovery Institute. This has been entertaining, but it interferes with my research and teaching.
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Andrew Sullivan on Mo Hassan and honor killings.

Andrew Sullivan hit the nail on the head. While many are trying to say that Hassan's beheading of his wife, while atrocious, was not an honor killing or had nothing to do with Islam, I and several others disagree. I see Andrew Sullivan, writer for The Atlantic, agrees on this matter.

Reading Sullivan's blog post on the matter, seems he has dug up some additional dirt about Hassan's hard-lined Islamic views against women.

The founder of a television station dedicated to showing how Islam is a religion of peace reacts to his wife's decision to divorce him by beheading her, and calling the cops to inform them. I learned of the case for the first time on Bill Maher, which means the MSM must have been doing a very good job suppressing it. Now the AP has provided a basic story of reaction; and the NYT's blog has a useful piece. It may be an honor killing, reacting to the disgrace of being divorced; but it's more likely just one last atrocity by a man who has terrorized every woman he has lived with:

Asma Firfirey, the sister of the deceased, stated Aasiya suffered last year from injuries that required nearly $3,000 of medical bills – allegedly the result of spousal abuse.

According to Zerqa Abid, first cousin of Hassan's first wife, "Both of his earlier wives filed divorce on the same grounds of severe domestic violence and abuses … it took [my cousin] several years to get rid of the fear of living with a man in marriage."

Attempts to deny any connection between this kind of behavior and the brutal misogyny of much Islamic culture seem bizarre to me. Obviously, the abuse of women is no community's or religion's exclusive sin. Chris Brown, anyone? My own church maintains a completely irrational and blanket discrimination against women in the priesthood. But the cultural and religious norms that facilitate brutal and often violent patriarchy in Islam make it easier for men to abuse and harder for women to resist. And the woman was beheaded. Moreover, the man had the usual misogyny widely accepted in many Muslim countries:

Nancy Sanders, the television station's news director for 2 1/2 years, remembers him asking her to move her feet during her job interview so he would not see her legs. She was wearing a skirt and stockings. He also would not let women enter his office unless his wife was there, and he blocked the station from airing a story about the first Muslim woman to win the title of Miss England in 2005, Sanders said.

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Producer who fought Islamic stereotypes commits stereotypical Islamic killing.

This isn't mean to be amusing, but oh the irony of it all! A producer who started an Islamic TV station with the intent of battling Islamic stereotypes becomes, himself, a horrendous stereotype of Islamic psychopaths. Not to say all Muslims are crazy, like this guy is, but the typical fear-mongering image of hard-lined Islamic followers beheading or otherwise killing their wives, termed "honor killings", is a fairly common theme. It was, after all, the central premise of the very infamous Law & Order: SVU episode, Honor.

The founder of an Islamic television station in upstate New York aimed at countering Muslim stereotypes has confessed to beheading his wife, authorities said.

Muzzammil Hassan was charged with second-degree murder after police found the decapitated body of his wife, Aasiya Hassan, at the Bridges TV station in the Buffalo suburb of Orchard Park, said Andrew Benz, Orchard Park's police chief.

Hassan was arrested Thursday.

His wife filed for divorce January 6, and police had responded to several domestic violence calls at the couple's home, Benz said.

Hassan went directly to the police station after his wife's death and confessed to killing her, Benz told CNN. Benz declined to give further details.

Attempts to reach an attorney for Hassan were unsuccessful, and his family didn't return calls from CNN.

He had two children, 4 and 6, with his wife. He had two other children, 17 and 18, from his previous marriage.

He launched Bridges TV, billed as the first English-language cable channel targeting Muslims inside the United States, in 2004. At the time, Hassan said he hoped the network would balance negative portrayals of Muslims following the attacks of September 11, 2001.

The station's staff is "deeply shocked and saddened by the murder of Aasiya Hassan and the subsequent arrest of Muzzammil Hassan," a statement from Bridges TV said.

"Our deepest condolences and prayers go out to the families of the victim," the statement said.
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On a different, but somewhat related note, Bil Maher's Religulous comes out on DVD tomorrow, the 17th. Pick up a copy and mock the types of religious fundamentalist assholes that are so much like Mr. Hassan. And to continue with Bill Maher plugs, Real Time with Bill Maher begins airing again Feb. 20th. Catch it on HBO or look on your favorite torrent site.

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