The Wandering Jew

Friday Night AMV

Shoot to thrill.

No, I can't explain it. But I really would have liked to have been a fly on the wall when they pitched this idea.

A Confession, After A Fashion

IRS Official: "Please delete this email." But doesn't Federal law require you to keep email records like this? Of course!

A Moment of Unity

It appears that, though we still disagree as to whether looting is an appropriate response to a police shooting, there is a moment of considerable left/right unity on the need to restrain the police. From The American Conservative:

A Department of Justice study revealed that a whopping 84 percent of police officers report that they’ve seen colleagues use excessive force on civilians, and 61 percent admit they don’t always report “even serious criminal violations that involve abuse of authority by fellow officers.”

This self-reporting moves us well beyond anecdote into the realm of data: Police brutality is a pervasive problem, exacerbated by systemic failures to curb it. That’s not to say that every officer is ill-intentioned or abusive, but it is to suggest that the common assumption that police are generally using their authority in a trustworthy manner merits serious reconsideration.

UPDATE: A collection of military veteran comments on the Ferguson events.

Joy

This is the latest picture of my old high-school friend's adopted daughter, blissing out in the beautiful clear water off of Padre Island in South Texas:

My friend and her husband adopted this girl from a Russian orphanage when she was about five years old.  She landed in clover, with a sane and loving family.  I've never met her, but I love reading about her on my friend's blog from time to time.  She always seems to be ready to burst with happiness.

Anti-Ass Coalition

Today's first story comes from right down the road in Gainesville, Georgia (formerly known as "Mule Camp Springs," because it was a place with sufficient water to water your mule train before or after a trip over the nearby mountains; for some reason we have a habit in Georgia of changing excellent historic place names to very bland ones). The Congressman for the Mighty Ninth Congressional district, Doug Collins, is on the job.

The previous day, the atheists (acting on behalf of a single, unnamed citizen) sent a letter to school officials demanding that the football coaching staff stop participating in team prayers and that they remove all biblical references and religious messages from team documents....

“The liberal atheist interest groups trying to bully Chestatee High School kids say they have a reason to believe that expressions of religious freedom are ‘not an isolated event’ in Northeast Georgia,” Collins wrote in a statement. “They’re right. In Hall County and throughout Georgia’s 9th district, we understand and respect the Constitution and cherish our right to worship in our own way.”...

And it was not lost on the Collins that while the American atheists are picking on high school kids, Christians in Iraq are facing unspeakable atrocities. “It’s utterly disgusting that while innocent lives are being lost in Iraq and other places at the hands of radical religious terrorists, a bunch of Washington lawyers are finding the time to pick on kids in Northeast Georgia,” he said.

Well, if the Caliphate would answer a summons, or obey a court ruling, I'm sure they'd be happy to sue them too.

Or at least threaten to sue. It seems like that often is enough by itself, these days. Take the case of a little restaurant in North Carolina that liked to give a small gift to customers it observed engaging in saying a family grace before dinner.

Mary probably thought she had a nice idea that would incentivize gratitude for the good in life. She stated publicly that “Who you talk to or meditate on etc. is your business,” giving all people of all various beliefs and non-beliefs an equal opportunity to qualify for the discount, but that clearly wasn’t enough for a well-lawyered organization whose desires seem to be satisfied by becoming the center of attention that rains on well-intentioned parades.

Regardless of the fact that the verb “pray” has multiple definitions, aside from the one with religious connotations, the [Freedom From Religion Foundation] decided to work against Mary’s instead of working with them to find an appropriate alternative that worked for all.

Now probably that one would have survived in court -- after all, plenty of places offer discounts only to certain classes of people ("Student discount!" "Senior discount!" "Ladies' Night!"). But as Mark Steyn has noted many times since his own legal troubles began, the process is the punishment: resisting the suit takes so much time and money that, even if you win, it's probably cost you everything.

These stunts -- I think of the famous case where "Zombie Muhammad" got his butt handed to him by an irate Muslim observer -- are built around abusing the system in order to undermine the things on which the system stands. You may, in a sense, have a right to dress like Muhammad as a zombie and march through a Muslim neighborhood. If you do it, you're an ass. You deserve the beating from which the system will try to protect you. Not for blasphemy, but for being an ass.

Pray or don't, but don't be these guys.

Love the Bill of Rights? Hater.

It's good to know that young ladies are being taught to think critically about their precious Constitutional heritage.

Tenth: Your man is passionate about states’ rights. Racists and homophobes love states’ rights. Be afraid.

Ninth: Your man picked the foundation for Roe v. Wade. Good egg!

Eighth: No “cruel and unusual punishment” for your guy! It’s unlikely that he’d be cruel to strangers.

Seventh, Sixth, Fifth, or Fourth: He’s really into criminal justice but probably not a troll. Breathe a sigh of relief.

Third: If he picks an amendment this useless, you should just dump him anyway even if he’s not a troll.

Second: Run. Seriously, just run! Your man might not be an asshole to people on the Internet because he’s too busy being an open-carrying asshole in real life.

First: This could be a huge warning sign. Trolls cite the First Amendment as frequently as college application essays cite “The Road Not Taken.” They think that it gives them the right to verbally harass, stalk, and threaten whomever they want without any consequences. If your man picks the First Amendment, just ask him to explain what it means. If he thinks it means that “it’s a free country” and “people can say whatever they want,” tell him to go back to the playground he learned his politics from and find a new boyfriend.

It's unlikely that he knew that the Ninth Amendment was the "foundation" for Roe v. Wade, since of course the decision has no actual foundation in the Constitution. It was "penumbras" that were the alleged foundation, which is to say that the whole thing is built on shadows.

A Fleet Horse...

...is not the best thing in life, but it is in the running.

Bayeux

Ten things you may not have noticed, even if you've spent quite a while looking at the Bayeux Tapestry.

One of the leading theories about it is that it was done rather quickly, and thus doesn't really represent the true skill of the women who doubtless wove it in celebration of the conquest. If true, still, they found time to include a few playful touches.

Three ridiculous stunts

You've probably heard already that James O'Keefe crossed the U.S.-Mexico border recently, disguised as Osama bin Laden in full get-up.  You may not realize, though, as Jim Geraghty has pointed out, that GOP congressional candidate Raj Peter Bhakta of Pennsylvania did something similar in 2006 when he crossed the border on an elephant with a mariachi band.



That can only be followed up with:

Russian Incrementalism

I'm planning on focusing on this war against the new Caliphate, because Russia is a dying power. Still, it seems intent on spending its last hours in a pleasant game of chess that I suspect it will win -- for an hour, while strength remains to hold what they are playing for. Of course, they might recover a bit of spirit if they win a few games of chess. But it's hard going to recover from a demographic death spiral such as they have entered.

As for the rules of the game, they are these -- the same rules of the Cold War:

Retreat

We have a "Just War" Pope

Pope Francis calls for coordinated, armed intervention in Iraq.

Cultural Appropriation

The song is from Australia. The idiom is from the poorest parts of Appalachia. The band is from...



...Finland.

Cortez on Gutenberg

Some of you expressed an interest in the history of Cortez in the New World once it was finished and came online.

Excuse me, Effendi...

Since we're going back into Iraq...

Here's a Woman with Something to Say

When I hear people talk about sex as if it’s no big deal, as if it’s no different than eating a steak or going for a drive on the freeway, when I see ads comparing voting to losing your virginity, or when I hear social conservatives slapped down when they voice their objections to a licentious culture, my heart grieves.

That’s because I’m picturing the girl walking home alone after having sex on the beer-drenched floor of a fraternity house with a guy too drunk to remember her name. The tears on her cheeks. The tightness in her chest, the sick feeling deep inside, and the already-hardening effect of knowing she will do it again.

I’m remembering a young girl who came to me with scars on her wrists and tremors in her soft voice as she told me about the day she aborted her baby. She wept uncontrollably in my arms for an innocence, a life, she would never have again, her dark eyes filled with a sorrow that only the greatest amount of love and grace could ever wash away.

I’m thinking of the boy who sits in a bathroom, alone, staring at a lab report that says he is HIV-positive. A sense of hopeless desperation wells up within him like a flood of dark water as he tries to breathe, to fight back the overwhelming fear that threatens to drown him. His life is forever changed. A precious gem exchanged for a handful of dust. I hear his sobs as he leans on the side of the tub begging for comfort no human can fully give.

It's not a toy. It's not a game. How strange we have forgotten that so obvious, so terrible a truth.

More gender charts

This time, on the crucial distinction between "uh" and "um."  As a bonus, a Facebook analysis that shows men are humorless, angry policy wonks while women are ditzy Polyanna shopaholics.

My Facebook verbal analysis would look about like this:

It'll come to me

H/t Bookworm Room.

Trayvon redux

I don't know what to make of this bizarre police shooting at an Ohio Walmart. It's got a lot of the Trayvon Martin dilemmas in it, right down to the tearful accounts of the dead black man's girlfriend, who was on the phone with him when he died, but with a lot more witnesses this time. The guy is said to have been driven to the Walmart without having a gun on him. At some point he was spotted wandering around the Walmart with a scary black gun and pointing it at people, perhaps trying to load it. Or else he simply picked up a toy gun and was carrying it to a cash register. Police shot him when he refused to surrender the weapon. Or else he was innocently turning to reply to a challenge, and answering "it's only a toy." In any case, it will be a relief to have a little more evidence to go on this time.