TREASON: How Rampant Bribery Is Corrupting U.S. Immigration Integrity. “Another more recent case involves former Customs and Border Protections Officer Hector Rodriguez, from the border checkpoint in San Ysidro, California. He was sentenced on September 9, 2013 to more than six years for bribery, bringing in illegal immigrants for financial gain, and conspiracy.”
DAMNED IF YOU DO, DAMNED IF YOU DON’T: Not Paying Attention to Black Criminals is Racist. “He was also African American, and this apparently matters, says eminent criminologist James Alan Fox. ‘It’s not nice to say it, but white America tends to be more intrigued about the minds and motives of white murderers,’ said Fox, who is a professor at Northeastern University.”
So, you’re supposed to notice because he’s black, but not notice that it’s because he’s black. That would be racist too.
After all, “He felt a lot of discrimination and racism with white people especially.”
I HOPE THAT SCIENTISTS CAN GET TO THE BOTTOM OF THIS: CDC: 94 to 95 percent of HIV cases among young men linked to gay sex.
DALROCK: Empowerment turned demotion.
Another divorcée writes to Slate’s Dear Prudence asking if it is normal that the divorce empowerment hasn’t kicked in yet (emphasis mine):
I divorced my husband of six years this spring, and even though the initial excitement of a new lease on life was exhilarating, I have found actuality to be just dreary and dismal. I fear I am spiraling downward and I have no way to stop it. . . . Recently, I have even taken to only shaving one leg so when I lie in bed at night I feel like a man is next to me. Should I expect this sort of reaction even after close to a year of mentally ending my marriage?
Sounds like it’s time to get one of these.
ADVENTURES IN EUPHEMISM: ‘Pro-choice’ woman describes ‘nightmare’ chemical abortion at Planned Parenthood. “‘After two hours of this,’ Kay says, ‘I felt a rush of blood and a large lemon-sized clot came out. I assume that was the pregnancy. I was horrified. Why hadn’t anyone told me that it would be like this?'” I didn’t realize that being pregnant means that you have a “pregnancy” inside your body.
RUSSIA: Discussion of Kant’s philosophy in Russia ends in gunfire. “Two men in their 20s were discussing Kant as they stood in line to buy beer at a small store on Sunday. The discussion deteriorated into a fistfight and one participant pulled out a small nonlethal pistol and fired repeatedly.”
Bill Vallicella: “This is what comes of ignoring ‘motorist’ Rodney King’s rhetorical question, ‘Kant we all just get along?'”
WE NEED TO CHANGE TO BE MORE INCLUSIVE. Don’t like it? Then get out.
Girlguiding UK announced in June that members would no longer mention God or “country” in the oath, but pledge to “be true to myself and develop my beliefs,” and serve the “community”. Although the decision brought in a record 839 complaints, the organisation has refused to back down, saying that mention of God was deterring new members. The change was brought about with the “support” of the National Secular Society after a complaint by an atheist Guide leader, Jem Henderson.
In August, a group of Christian Girl Guide and Brownie leaders in North Yorkshire objected to the new wording, saying that Guiding had always had God “at its core,” but were told by the Guide leadership they had to conform or risk being expelled from the organisation.
Earlier: Solipsism as a religious experience.
“ARE YOU KIDDING ME? You hired a convicted prostitute and thief to handle state money? Hello!”
A REQUEST that Ball State University be consistent. “Not only do Honors 296, 297, and 298 seminars typically have large amounts of nonscience content, a perusal of the official BSU description for these courses reveals that BSU actually requires the seminars to cover non-scientific content. … BSU cannot have it both ways. If it maintains that intelligent design cannot be discussed by Prof. Hedin in Honors 296 because it is non-scientific and therefore outside the scope of a ‘science course,’ then non-science content in all of the other sections of Honors 296, 297, and 298 must be banned as well.”
CANADA: Atheists demand removal of pro-life banner over B.C. city street, but mayor won’t budge.
The blue banner, hoisted on behalf of the Kamloops Pro-Life Society, includes a silhouette of a baby, young girl, and elderly woman standing beneath a tree.
The text reads, “One life can make a difference. Protect human life week.” . . .
Bill Ligertwood of the atheist group Kamloops Centre for Rational Thought has said that the city should not have approved the banner since, in his view, it violates a city policy on street banners. The policy states that banners must not “promote political parties or points of view, religious points of view, commercial ventures, controversial issues or other content that contradicts the human rights codes.”
I didn’t think that atheists would want to go on record as suggesting that advocating the protection of human life is “controversial” or particularly “religious.”
INDIA’S SEX-SELECTIVE ABORTIONS begun by Western population control planners.
Matthew Connelly, a history professor at Columbia University in New York, told lawmakers that “It was development professionals who first promoted sex-selective abortion as a potential solution to what they saw as the population explosion.”
In fact, it was Steven Polgar, the leader of Planned Parenthood’s research in the 1960s, who urged biologists to find a way to determine an unborn child’s sex. . . .
“In India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Indonesia, Western donors helped pay people to be sterilized, and Western consultants advised denial of health care and education to those who refused,” Connelly testified. “When, in 1975, Indira Gandhi declared a state of emergency and used the police and army to march people to sterilization camps, foreign donors actually increased their support.”
That’s how an IBD editorial recently described a proposal from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) (“Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing” – who could object to that lofty goal?) that will force local communities around the country to loosen their zoning laws so that more public housing can be built in “racist” zip codes that are not considered to be “inclusive” enough. It’s a proposal that would force racial integration on America’s suburban neighborhoods that could be unprecedented in its scope and reach.
An op-ed in last Friday’s WSJ provides some disturbing details on how HUD’s assault on local zoning codes has already affected one community – Westchester County (north of New York City) – and illustrates what the rest of the country can expect as the federal government’s social-engineering efforts move forward to forcibly impose racial integration on America’s suburban neighborhoods.
MODERN DAY DEBTORS’ PRISON: New Jersey Ex-Husband Fighting Alimony Denied Release.
Ari Schochet, a New Jersey man sent to jail for missing alimony payments, was ordered by a judge to remain confined in a county work-release program.
Schochet, featured in an Aug. 26 Bloomberg story on proposals to change New Jersey’s alimony laws, must spend his nights and weekends locked inside a county jail unless he pays a lump sum of $25,000 toward more than $233,000 in arrears, New Jersey Family Court Judge Ronny Jo Siegel ruled today after a hearing in Bergen County Jail in Hackensack.
Schochet, who once worked as a portfolio manager at Wall Street firms, has been jailed for missing court-ordered payments at least eight times in the past two years after the end of his 17-year marriage. Job losses and a weak economy caused him to run through his savings trying to pay his ex-wife alimony and child support that totaled almost $100,000 a year.
Get a prenup.
JOSEPH SALERNO: Poverty Just Ain’t What It Used To Be. “A newly released report by the U.S. Census Bureau indicates that most Americans living below the bureaucratically designated “poverty line” enjoy most modern conveniences. For example more than 80 percent of U.S. households below the poverty line have a: refrigerator (97.8%); stove (96.6%); television (96.1%); microwave oven (93.1%); air conditioner (83.4%); VCR/DVD player (83.2%); and cell phone (80.9%). In addition, more than half of households beneath the poverty level also have a: clothes washer (68.7%); clothes dryer (65.3%); computer (58.2%); and landline telephone (54.9). Now, when we use these figures as a standard of comparison, most middle-class Americans families in, say, 1960, were living well below the poverty line. But this comparison obscures the important point that capitalism long ago solved the problem of poverty in a meaningful sense and in doing so radically transformed the very concept of poverty.”
CRANMER: Church in Wales approves women bishops. “The Church in Wales has just voted in favour of the consecration of women as bishops. What I found interesting about this was the remark earlier this week by the Archbishop of Wales saying, ‘The consecration of women bishops is obviously theologically right.’ Interesting because if it is so obvious why didn’t it occur to the church for the first two thousand years of its history?”
VOX DAY: Of women and university. “The point is not that no young women should be permitted to attend university, but rather, that young women should be taught to see university attendance as a path that comes with certain advantages and benefits as well as certain disadvantages and opportunity costs. Reflexive university attendance is foolish; there is no value in going into debt in order to get a sociology degree, or worse, as is very often the case, in order to not get any degree at all.”
TODD STARNES: Air Force cracking down on Christians.
MAKE UP YOUR MINDS: Global warming? No, actually we’re cooling, claim scientists.
ART CARDEN: Sometimes, “Not My Problem” Is the Right Answer. “The tradition of what Peter J. Boettke calls ‘Mainline Economics’ connecting scholars like (for example) Adam Smith, Friedrich Hayek, and James Buchanan, emphasizes the fact that we rarely have enough knowledge about what Hayek called ‘the particular circumstances of time and place‘ to interfere advantageously in others’ affairs. Too often, the impulse to action clouds our better judgment, and we make an even bigger mess of things.”
VIOLENT VIDEO GAMES ARE EVIL: Teens help a family in a burning building after buying the new Grand Theft Auto game.
NY POST: Tina Brown’s charity gave out just $10K.
The celebrity-backed charity launched by departing Daily Beast editrix Tina Brown failed to meet the company’s goals in its first year out of the gate — handing out just $10,000 in grant money in 2011 despite raising nearly $1.2 million, IRS records show.
The nonprofit Women in the World Foundation kicked off to much fanfare in 2011 with a star-studded Manhattan party that cost $168,048 and was hosted by Meryl Streep.
In IRS registration papers, the foundation estimated it would give out $300,000 in grants from June to December 2011, but fell short of the mark, with a single $10,000 payout to the Fund for the City of New York, records show.
“HEALTHCARE REFORM” means less work, fewer hours. “The chart above shows the most recent 20 companies that have cut hours and/or jobs due to Obamacare, and that’s only through August 13 and so doesn’t include recent announcements by companies like Stryker (1,000 jobs cut) and Indiana University (50 jobs cuts). Of the 258 companies listed so far in the IBD database that have specified the number of jobs with fewer hours due to Obamacare (and that’s fewer than half of the companies), there are almost 25,000 workers who can thank President Obamacare and the Unaffordable Care Act for the reduction in their hours.”
ROBERT HIGGS: All Government Policies Succeed in the Long Run.
People label a policy as a failure because it does not bring about its declared objective. . . .
These objectives are not the policy-makers’ real objectives, but only the public rationales they use to disguise their true objective, which invariably is to bring about the enrichment, aggrandizement, and other benefit of the politically potent individuals and interest groups that pack the decisive punch in the policy-making process—for example, those who can most effectively threaten legislators with affirmative punishments or the withdrawal of financial support for the legislators’ reelection if the string pullers’ interests are not served.
NEWSBUSTERS: Ex-Leftist Informant Who Stopped Violence at 2008 GOP Convention Is Taunted by NPR as ‘FBI Rat’. “Darby went to the FBI when his leftist group built Molotov cocktails to firebomb attendees at the Republican convention in Minneapolis. Wouldn’t this make him a hero? Nope.”
IF I HAD A SON, he would look like Jamal.
An Opa-Locka teenager is being held without bond after a court hearing and after Miami-Dade Police arrested him for shooting and killing a 71-year-old man. . . .
The chilling crime was captured on surveillance tape at 4 p.m. on August 21st outside the Top Value Supermarket in Opa-Locka.
ADVENTURES IN EUPHEMISM: Pro-opposition Syria analyst O’Bagy admits she was never enrolled in Ph.D. program.
O’Bagy was fired last week from the Institute for the Study of War after the think tank alleged she lied about her education credentials. The institute claimed O’Bagy did not have a Ph.D. degree from Georgetown University as she had claimed.
O’Bagy reportedly countered that she had defended her dissertation, and was simply waiting for the university to confer the degree.
But in a statement to The Daily Beast, O’Bagy reportedly admitted she was never enrolled in that program. She apparently applied to a joint master’s/Ph.D. program, but was not accepted. She was only in the master’s program.
“I would like to deeply apologize to every person with whom I have worked, who has read and depended upon my research, and to the general public,” O’Bagy said in a statement. “While I have made many mistakes and showed extremely poor judgment, I most particularly regret my public misrepresentation of my educational status and not immediately disclosing that I had not been awarded a doctorate in May 2013.”
I think the problem is more about claiming to have received a doctorate rather than about failing immediately to disclose not having received one. I mean, I’ve never disclosed not having received a doctorate and I certainly don’t feel any regret. But then again, I never lied about having one in the first place. But that’s just me, I guess.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: Why Rude People Get Dates. “Snappy repartee has a better chance of making a lasting impression — and insults in particular can create a sense of familiarity and connectedness between individuals.” We need psychologists to tell us this, apparently.
WELL, OKAY THEN: Public masturbation not a crime: Swedish court. “The court added that no offence had been committed as the masturbating man was not pleasuring himself towards a specific person.”
WHO WATCHES THE WATCHERS OF THE WATCHMEN? Ramesh Ponnuru analyzes a leftist senator’s asinine attack on the record of the Supreme Court.
STUDENT EXODUS in Michigan school district where teachers defended child molester.
The student body count in the West Branch-Rose City district, in northeast Michigan is down unofficially some 87 students following a tumultuous summer in which angry parents blasted seven teachers for writing letters in support of former teacher Neal Erickson. The letters urged a judge to be lenient in sentencing Erickson, who admitted to sexual misconduct with an underage, male student from 2006 to 2009. When the school board declined to take action against the teachers, many parents vowed to pull their kids out of the public schools, which have a total enrollment of just over 2,000.
Earlier: Women defend convicted pederast.
Related: New report shows continued rise in homeschool popularity…
IF I HAD A SON, he would look like De’Marquise. “An 18-year-old Brunswick man was sentenced Thursday to life in prison without parole plus 105 years for murdering a 13-month-old baby, wounding the toddler’s mother in a failed robbery and shooting a preacher in another attempted robbery.”
CULTURAL ENRICHMENT in Stockholm. “The number of police reports concerning rape in Stockholm has increased by 16 percent so far this year. A large part of the increase involves the rape of young girls.”
RELIGION OF PIECES: The Disastrous Campaign to Rid the Middle East of Christianity. “At the start of World War I, the Christian population of the Middle East may have been as high as 20 percent. Today, it is roughly four percent. Although it is difficult to be exact, there are perhaps 13 million Christians left in the region, and that number has likely fallen further, given the continued destabilization of Syria and Egypt, two nations with historically large Christian populations. At the present rate of decline, there may very well be no significant Christian presence in the Middle East in another generation or two.” The author points out that the Muslims will lose, too — by missing out on “pluralism” and “religious diversity.” What?
THE JOBS AMERICANS WON’T DO? U.S. releases illegal immigrants who are sex offenders. Only 2,837? I guess they couldn’t find enough to commemorate 9/11.
THE FORT HOOD SHOOTING WAS, LIKE, A LONG TIME AGO: Wow: CNN Anchor Can’t Remember any Gun Attacks on US Military Installations.
“I used to work in Washington, live in Washington. This seems so unusual to me that a gunman could create this kind of havoc at a U.S. military facility,” Costello asked her producer, Brian Todd. “Have you ever heard of this happening before, Brian?”
“I was just saying that this is so unusual, because this is such a heavily-secured military facility. I’ve worked in Washington for many years, I’ve never heard of such a thing happening,” she asked.
Workplace violence is rather forgettable, isn’t it?
TOUCH A MINOR, be the victim.
Lusk initially denied the allegations, but later admitted to police that her hand grazed the boy’s genitals during a visit at her house. . . .
“No, I really don’t think about (Frank),” she said. “I feel very bad for what happened. I don’t think he’s ever accepted responsibility for what he did.”
Watch out for those wily fourteen-year-olds seducing unsuspecting, middle-aged women.
NOT SURPRISING: Police: Raleigh tattoo parlor accepted food stamps as payment. “Raleigh police seized evidence while executing a search warrant Thursday. A search warrant shows police seized proceeds from the buying and selling of EBT cards, computer terminals used in the crimes and evidence of ownership of Ink Addiction Tattooz.” The real crime was institutionalizing the EBT model in the first place.
CAN’T TRUST THE GOVERNMENT: Obamacare exchange leaks data of 2,400 unsuspecting customers. “‘The more I thought about it, the more troubled I was,’ Koester told the Minnesota Star Tribune. ‘What if this had fallen into the wrong hands? It’s scary. If this is happening now, how can clients of MNsure be confident their data is safe?'”
NEXT TIME, DON’T CALL THE POLICE: What Happens When a Millionaire Mogul Uses a Gun to Defend Himself in New York? “When police arrived to investigate the break-in, Bardwil told them exactly what happened and voluntarily showed them the surveillance tape. So police arrested him for possessing an illegal gun. He is currently free on $250,000 bail.”
THE LONELY LIVES OF EXPERTS: Women should start a family before turning 35 to avoid being ‘haunted’ by their decision to wait, experts warn. I’ve tried this line in bars and it doesn’t work well.
AS IF IT WERE EVER IN DOUBT: FBI Admits It Controlled Tor Servers Behind Mass Malware Attack.
“GENDER NEUTRAL” means inverting stereotypes involving males and females, evidently. “A top UK toy seller is set to advertise ‘gender [sic] neutral [sic]’ toys, bowing to pressure from a campaign group inspired by a Swedish toy catalogue that showed Spiderman pushing a pram and a young girl with a gun.” How daring.
ADVENTURES IN EUPHEMISM, UK EDITION: Gangs of Asian men are grooming underage MUSLIM girls too. So when they’re perpetrators, they’re “Asian,” and when they’re victims, they’re “Muslim.” Got it.
EGYPT: Islamists seize a Protestant church and turn it into a mosque. “Menassa Nesseim, the Pastor of the local Protestant community, tells Mcn-direct (an Egyptian Christian Press Agency) that ‘since August 14 , the day of the Islamist assault against Christians, no one has been able to enter the building .’ He denounces the inaction of the authorities who have accepted the fact with indifference: ‘Neither the police nor the armed forces have raided the church, to eject the squatters and return the building to the Protestant community’. Nesseim reports that the militants have placed their men to guard the complex. Christians are afraid to approach their church.”
RELIGION OF PIECES: Muslim Persecution of Christians: June, 2013.