A Different Kind of White House in Marianna, FL

When I lived in Florida, I went to a town called Marianna a few times. My most recent trip there was just this past September when I returned to the state to collect beetle specimens. Marianna has a dark past in a number of ways and is, to this day, a bit out of step with modern thinking. Every so often, something beyond distasteful bubbles out of the place. The following, a story that sounds like the backdrop for a horror movie, is one of them.

'White House Boys' win inquiry of reform school graves

By Rich Phillips

Four men, now in their 60s, met over the Internet, shared stories about the darkest days of their pasts and spurred an investigation into 32 graves at a reform school.

Roger Kiser, Michael McCarthy, Bryant Middleton and Dick Colon talked about whippings and beatings and other boys who disappeared. They discussed the 32 crosses marking the graves of persons unknown on the grounds of the former Florida Industrial School for Boys.

They called their group the White House Boys, taking the name from the single story concrete building where, they say, boys were beaten and tortured decades ago.

The White House Boys believe that delinquents and orphans sent to the concrete White House were killed and their remains buried to cover up the brutality.

This week, the four called on Florida Gov. Charlie Crist to investigate. Crist agreed and asked the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to search for remains, identify them and determine whether any crimes were committed.

The department agreed to look into the mystery of the 32 crosses on the grounds of what is now known as the Dozier School, in Marianna, just south of the Alabama state line...

...A guard confronted the other boy and began to treat him roughly, Middleton said.

"He dragged him to the administration building, and I never saw him again. He never came back to work or to the cottage," Middleton said. "He literally disappeared off the face of the Earth..."

Colon said he remembers entering the laundry one day, and his life has never been the same.

Inside a large tumble dryer was a black teen.

The White House boys, who are all white, said black kids at the school were beaten even more savagely than white kids...

While it's worth keeping in mind that these are only allegations and the 32 anonymous metal crosses may or may not turn out to mark graves where human remains were interred, episodes like this weren't unknown from the time and geography.

If it turns out to be true, it's still unlikely that anyone will ever face charges for the murders. It's been 50 years or more; most if not all of the alleged culprits are likely dead themselves by now. Even if they weren't, I would imagine it would be nearly impossible to tie any surviving employees to a particular crime by now in a conclusive manner.

The image of a teenager in a dryer and the story of one inmate who simply disappeared... someone needs to interview the four survivors mentioned in the story for a horror movie. What a nightmare.

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Larry Craig: Another Appeal Denied

I noted yesterday that the appeal by former Florida state representative Bob Allen had been denied. While Allen's pretty well known in some circles, few cases of conservative politicians soliciting sex in men's bathrooms had garnered as much interest as that of Idaho Senator Larry Craig (R). As you may recall, Craig entered a guilty plea after his infamous "wide stance" solicitation in a bathroom at the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport and then said that he'd resign only to later not only fail to step down but to file an appeal seeking to retract his guilty plea.

A decision has just come down in the last couple of hours and, like Bob Allen, Larry Craig's appeal has also been denied. The full decision by the Minnesota Court of Appeals has been released, but the gist of it is that Craig's guilty plea will stand because he lacks any legal basis on which to retract it. Or, if you prefer your legalese undiluted:

To be valid, a guilty plea must be "accurate, voluntary and intelligent." State v. Ecker, 524 N.W.2d 712, 716 (Minn. 1994). For a plea to be accurate, it must be supported by a proper factual basis. Id. Appellant argues that the plea was not accurate because it lacked a full record of supporting facts.

Appellant did not appear in person when his plea was filed, but a guilty plea is not invalid merely because it is entered in writing. See Minn. R. Crim. P. 15.03, subd. 2...

But, because appellant did not appear, the written plea petition was the only account given to the district court of appellant's version of the offense. The relevant paragraph of the petition states:

"I am pleading guilty to the charge of Disorderly Conduct as alleged because on June 11, 2007, within the property or jurisdiction of the Metropolitan Airports Commission, Hennepin County, specifically in the restroom of the North Star Crossing in the Lindbergh Terminal, I did the following: Engaged in conduct which I knew or should have known tended to arouse alarm or resentment or [sic] others, which conduct was physical (versus verbal) in nature."

...Appellant argues that because the paragraph lacks a description of the alleged conduct it fails to provide an adequate factual basis.

Appellant's argument is unsupported by the record. A verbatim record was required to be made of the August 8, 2007 proceeding at which appellant's petition to plead guilty was filed and he was sentenced. See Minn. R. Crim. P. 27.03, subd. 6(A) (requiring verbatim record of sentencing proceedings). A defendant is responsible for providing a record adequate for appellate review, including a transcript if necessary. See State v. Anderson, 351 N.W.2d 1, 2 (Minn. 1984) (holding claim of trial error could not be reviewed without transcript). Appellant did not order a transcript of the August 8, 2007 proceeding...

— Source

And it goes on from there, as legalese does, to set out why Craig's appeal simply doesn't hold water.

Larry Craig is still guilty by his own admission. More importantly than the legal offense he committed, though, is his hypocrisy in the whole matter, one that he maintains to this day. Craig, like Bob Allen, could remedy this by simply coming out of the closet and explaining his errors while maintaining that gay men can legitimately hold conservative political views and ideas that don't extend to curtailing the rights of other gay men in order to bolster their standing amongst the homophobic segments of society. He could point out that he served as a Senator in ways that otherwise represented his constituency and that his homosexuality, like all homosexuality, is at most a coincidence that, absent social stigmatization, has zero bearing on the fitness of an individual to serve in office, vote, serve in the military, or otherwise enjoy the rights and fulfill the responsibilities incumbent upon all of us as members of American society, no matter whom we might prefer to twiddle our dangly bits now and again.

Will he continue in his hypocrisy, though? I'd bet on it.

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Godless Sign Found in Washington: True-Believers Say Dumb Things in the Meantime

The sign placed by the Freedom from Religion Foundation in the state capitol building in Olympia, Washington and then stolen — possibly at the behest of notable falafel enthusiast Bill "Would You Look at the Size of That Head" O'Reilly — has been returned. It was dropped off at Seattle radio station KMPS by an unidentified man, received by receptionist Rose Gumpe and passed to DJ Ichabod Caine. It's now being used as promotional material by the radio station for Caine. KOMO-TV news in Seattle has the story:

According to local police in Washington:

State Patrol Sgt. Ted DeHart said the billboard was still on display Thursday evening when the Capitol rotunda building was shut down.

He said there would be no way someone not authorized to be inside could get in the building after it's closed at 6 p.m...

— Source

So it looks very much like an inside job, as it were.

It's worth noting that KMPS is a country music station, speaking perhaps to a conservative demographic in terms of its listeners (and recent guests on Caine's show have included Dinesh D'Souza). Caine had been discussing the sign on his show since it went up, although he denies any responsibility in terms of its theft. It may explain, at least, why the sign was dropped off at the station.

Personally, I think this event is yet another example of the "religion does not make people moral" principle. The situation is that religious groups were allowed to place displays on government property, and as both Governor Chris Gregoire and Attorney General Rob McKenna explain in a bipartisan joint statement,

The U.S. Supreme Court has been consistent and clear that, under the Constitution's First Amendment, once government admits one religious display or viewpoint onto public property, it may not discriminate against the content of other displays, including the viewpoints of nonbelievers.

That someone, or even some group of people, found the sign objectionable is not the point. The FFRF had the right to place their sign in the Capitol because other groups were allowed to advertise religion-related messages. There is nothing special about it being a couple of weeks before a holiday held in particular esteem by one such group; the same rights and responsibilities still apply, and unauthorized removal of the sign constitutes theft as it would during any other time of the year. A crime was committed, and the motivation for that crime being religious or political makes no difference at all. It is exactly the same crime that would have been committed if someone who agreed with the FFRF had swiped a baby Jesus mannequin from a creche.

Caine, for his part, misses a subtle but important point in the interview recorded above. He states that the sign is "negative speech." He's right in that, of course. The sign is making a manifestly negative statement about religion, as it was intended to do. However, any religious display, and in fact nearly every religion, makes an intrinsically negative statement about all other religions (or the absence thereof). Each maintains that it is the correct one and that others are, therefore, incorrect. The Christian religion teaches that belief in the divine nature of Jesus is necessary to gain a reward in the afterlife and "blessings" in this life, and that there is no other way. That's an essentially negative statement about any religion that doesn't include this belief and the accompanying obeisances. Islam says the same thing about the status of Mohamed as a prophet. In fact, both Christianity and Islam were formulated precisely as negative statements against what was perceived at the time as corruption within the existent religions from which they stemmed (Christianity regarding Judaism, Islam regarding both Judaism and Christianity). This isn't even touching on polytheistic religions. To say, then, that beliefs are to be inherently respected or should go unchallenged by negative statements about them runs precisely counter to why those beliefs were formulated into codified religions in the first place. A Christmas display, a menorah... it doesn't matter. None of them make only a positive statement of belief, they also make a negative statement about other beliefs. If they didn't, they would be meaningless. The FFRF's sign was more explicit in it's statement of non-belief, and that non-belief was about the very supernaturalism upon which religions are based. One God is, after all, just one more than none.

That true-believers realize all of this at some level is exemplified by another sign put up in the State Capitol by Ken Hutcherson, former NFL player and Tim LaHaye/Rush Limbaugh disciple and present senior pastor at the Antioch Bible Church:

The controversy over the anti-religion sign prompted Rev. Ken Hutcherson, pastor of the Antioch Bible Church in Kirkland, to post a pro-religion sign about 15 feet from where the athiest sign was located.

It reads: "There is one God. There is one Devil. There are angels, a heaven and hell. There is more than our natural world. Atheism is but myth and superstition that hardens hearts and enslaves minds."

— Source

To make such a statement, Hutcherson first has to know in some way what the basis of the FFRF's sign was and how it ties into the state-sponsored religious debate that has been opened up in the capitol building. Of course, stating that a non-belief can be superstition or myth — both of which categories are entirely based on positive beliefs — is stupidity, duplicity, or both. If Hutcherson himself weren't part of the effort of one religion to make negative statements about others, moreover, his church would not have the following as elements of their doctrinal statement:

We believe the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be the verbally inspired Word of God, the final authority for faith and life, inerrant in the original writings, infallible and God-breathed..

In other words, all beliefs other than ours are wrong. This is "negative speech.

We believe that man was created in the image of likeness of God, but that through Adam's sin the race fell, inherited a sinful nature, and became alienated from God; and that man is totally depraved, and of himself utterably unable to remedy his lost condition (Genesis 1:26,27; Romans 3:22,23, 5:12; Ephesians 2:1-3, 12).

We believe that salvation is the gift of God brought to man by grace and received by personal faith in the Lord Jesus Christ...

This, of course, means that anyone who doesn't hold these beliefs is "fallen" and not "redeemed." It's a negative statement couched in a positive assertion

The sign may be back, but the episode points out that there is a growing connection between the right to free expression and the holding of a particular set of beliefs in a worryingly substantial portion of the American populace. In Washington, this connection found expression in the theft of the sign by an as-yet-unidentified (and likely to remain unidentified, unless he seeks publicity) culprit with very specific motives. In California, it was a local official who brought pressure to bear for the removal of a statement of non-belief after calls from a few religious residents. Statements that challenge religion are seen as things to be excepted from free speech.

When and if that happens, the true-believers can fight it out amongst themselves whose statements of belief are allowable and whose aren't. After all, ask a religious Jew what he/she thinks about the divinity of Jesus and he's going to make a negative statement in all likelihood. If statements about the non-existence of God aren't protected, then why should we expect that statements about the non-divinity or non-existence of Jesus would be? And after they get that hashed out, maybe they can have a boxing match to decide whether the denial of papal infallibility and the central importance of the Vatican by Protestants should be protected or not.

Given the time, I'm sure that believers like Hutcherson can ultimately figure out exactly which speech and which religions are guaranteed freedom... and which aren't.

Oddly, enough, the FFRF sign never mentions any such things and no atheists I know of have suggested that the negative statements about reason and logic made by the religious should be considered blasphemous and so not protected speech. You can't have blasphemy without the belief to blaspheme in the first place. Without the superstition, there can be no violation... which would throw a bit of a kink into Hutcherson's very silly sign if he only hadn't gotten a few concussions back when he played football.

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Exorcism in Texas: American Kindoki Kills Another Child

There's been yet another exorcism-related death in the US. This time it's in Henderson, Texas where a couple of 18 year old parents beat their 13 month old child to death with a hammer and possibly several other blunt instruments in an attempt to "drive the demons out." Oh, and they bit her at least 20 times, too.

Couple Bit Child More Than 20 Times in Fatal Exorcism

by Kenneth Dean

They claim they were trying to drive the demons out of the 13-month-old, but law enforcement officers say the bottom line is a Rusk County couple bludgeoned the little girl to death with a hammer and other objects and bit her more than 20 times in the most grotesque murder the seasoned officers can remember.

Blaine Keith Milam, 19 and Jesseca Bain Carson, 18, both of Henderson, remain jailed on $2 million bonds each. They are charged with capital murder for the Tuesday morning death of Carson's daughter Amora Bain Carson...

"They had multiple stories they went through before they told us they had beaten the child to death," he said. "It is their version of the truth."

Humber said the couple then told deputies the child was possessed and they were trying to rid her of demons.

An arrest affidavit states Milam performed an exorcism of the demons possessing their child. The affidavit continues to state after Milam killed the child with Carson looking on the couple "drove to Henderson to pawn some items to pay for an exorcism."

Officials said Milam and Carson told detectives they decided to hire a priest after the exorcism went badly...

Milam also has a previous criminal record of assault on a child and domestic violence.

This is no different from the kindoki mass panic going on in Africa. It's not even that uncommon that forceful exorcisms occur in Texas, a state whose Supreme Court ruled earlier this year that churches can't be sued for conducting these barbaric rituals. How many more children are going to die as the result of a parent believing in demonic possession? Children are being beaten to death, strangled, and stabbed. Rather than try to stop it, organized churches — the Catholic church in particular, but by no means only the Catholic church — continue to propagate the superstitious belief in evil spirits, adding only the caveat that only their clergymen are qualified to perform the gibberish rites to remove the nonexistent spirits.

Until religious officials stand up and admit that all their bullshit about possession and demons is exactly that, this is going to keep on happening. It will happen again and again and again so long as Evangelicals put forth their deliverance ministries and the Vatican trains exorcists and religions keep telling people that they can be possessed.

It's a lie. It's a fairy tale. It's fraud. Every pastor, every priest, every one of them, is complicit in these deaths. If not for them, the very circumstances that fosters this insanity would ultimately cease to exist. That should have happened centuries ago.

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Birmingham Mayor Larry Langford Provides Evidence That Prayer Works

It's rare that we get any possible evidence that prayer works, so the story of Birmingham, Alabama mayor Larry Langford is a particularly interesting one. Let's start back on April 23, 2008. On that date, the mayor, already known for his public prayer vigils and sermonizing, issued a proclamation that his city was going to fight crime through "humbling itself." This was done through the wearing of sackcloth and ashes, and in this way, according to Langford, there would be divine intervention:

Mayor Larry Langford declared Friday as "It's Time to Pray Day" in Birmingham and will mark the event with a prayer service at Boutwell Auditorium.

Langford made the proclamation Tuesday during the City Council meeting.

"We're going to pray for a change in this city," he said.

During the service, participants will be given sackcloth to wear and ashes to put on their skin. The practice is mentioned in the Bible of the Bible as an act of repentance and humility.

Langford ordered 2,000 of the sacks...

Langford continued to defend his religious rallies and calls for prayer, saying the city needs both government and divine intervention to solve major problems including crime.

"The moral fiber of this community is also our responsibility," he said...

— The Birmingham News, April 23, 2008

To me, this sounds like an absolutely nutty idea. Still, maybe it worked after all.

Today, Larry Langford was arrested on 60 counts of corruption, bribery and filing false income tax returns. Hmmm...

Federal authorities arrested the mayor of Birmingham, Alabama, on Monday in a corruption probe surrounding a massive sewer bond debt that has forced Jefferson County to the brink of bankruptcy.

Authorities arrested Mayor Larry Langford at his place of business in Birmingham at 7 a.m. (1200 GMT) and indicted him on 60 counts including bribery, conspiracy and filing false tax returns, according to U.S. Attorney Alice Martin...

"He sold out his public office to his friends Blount and LaPierre for about $235,000 in expensive clothes, watches and cash to pay his growing personal debt. All the while, Blount was paid fees topping $7 million," said Martin.

"Through a web of financing agreements Langford required many institutions to use Blount as a consultant so Blount would make fees and in turn pay off Langford," Martin told a news conference, adding: "It was a classic pay-to-play scheme..."

— Reuters, December 1, 2008

Can I get an "amen"?

If patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel, surely piety must be penultimate.

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Die for Wal-Mart: Christmas Spirit in Suburban New York

Yesterday was Black Friday, the most important day of the year for retailers in the United States. Millions of Americans get the day after Thanksgiving of from work and most of them go shopping. The stores start opening at ridiculously early hours and shoppers begin lining up at midnight in some places.

This year, the economy being as bad as it is, Wal-Mart is doing a booming business. So booming, in fact, that the Damour family has a whole new reason to call yesterday "Black Friday." It's the day when Jdimytai Damour, a temporary worker charged with opening the doors at a Wal-Mart in Valley Stream, NY, was trampled to death by a horde of shoppers who thought that getting first dibs on that new George Foreman grill was more important than safety or civility.

Worker dies, patrons injured in stampede at Wal-Mart

By Joseph Mallia & Matthew Chayes

A stampede of shoppers in a Valley Stream Wal-Mart on Friday morning left one worker dead and at least three patrons injured after an impatient crowd broke down the store doors and trampled the seasonal employee, Nassau police said.

Jdimytai Damour of Jamaica, Queens, was pushed to the ground by the 2,000-plus crowd just before 5 a.m. as management was preparing to open the store, which is located across from the main Green Acres Mall building. Hundreds stepped over, around and on the 34-year-old worker as they rushed into the store...

During the fracas, first-responders struggled to reach Damour to tend to him, witnesses said. Even the first police officers on the scene were jostled around, police said...

Amid the chaos in Valley Stream, shoppers were asked to leave by other store workers, said Cribbs. Others ignored the pleas that they stop shopping, move to the front of the store and exit, she said...

Frightened employees initially used the doors as makeshift shields to defend against the onslaught of shoppers, she said.

At that point, lots of people were on the ground, she said, not just Damour.

Authorities said Damour, who was pronounced dead at Franklin Hospital Medical Center in Valley Stream, was working at the store through an employment agency that contracts with the retail giant...

People have lost their minds. A person died, and died horribly, because too many people needed some new toy at a discount more than they needed to stop and think about the well-being of a fellow human. Even when people were on the ground, even when police were trying to help an injured, bleeding person lying on the ground and not moving, the shoppers kept on coming. Nothing was more significant to them than an Incredible Hulk DVD or a sweater or who knows what other insignificant junk that would have been available some other day, if for a few more dollars. There was no reason for this to happen; Damour's death is meaningless and horrible. He was treated worse than we treat animals.

What possesses people to do a thing like this? If you see a crowd of thousands waiting outside a store, go home. Just go shopping some other day... or don't bother. Order online. How could one of these rabid shoppers even give a gift purchased while someone was trampled at the store where they got the thing? "Enjoy your new nose hair trimmer, Uncle Steve! Jdimytai Damour died for it."

If anyone had any doubts about the meaning of Christmas, rejoice. Your query has been answered. It's the most menacing time of the year.

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Mumbai Mujahedin: Terror, Mass Murder and "Blasphemy" Resolutions

Islam is frequently and wrongly associated with human rights violations and terrorism.

I wonder if the 85 members of the UN General Assembly who voted on November 25 in favor of the anti-blasphemy resolution from whence those words came are feeling any sense of irony today, the day after an undetermined number of terrorists sormed into the Indian city of Mumbai and turned it into a war zone and killing ground. At last count, at least 125 people have died, 325 have been injured, and hostages are still being held by a group calling itself the Deccan Mujahedin.

Indian military commandos continued to exchange fire with an unknown number of militants one day after coordinated groups of gunmen shot and blasted their way through tourist sites around Mumbai on Wednesday night, apparently targeting American, Israeli and British citizens for use as hostages...

One hostage, a Polish national, said he was very happy to be free and praised the Indian military commandos. Moments later, a man identified as being of Lebanese descent was carried out with two other people, too weary to address the throng of reporters.

Most of Mumbai remained in shock today. In many neighborhoods, 80% of the businesses remained closed as police warned residents to stay at home, where many followed the unfolding drama on television.

A previously unknown group calling itself Deccan Mujahedin said it carried out the attack.

We will, no doubt, get some perfunctory denunciations from countries like Saudi Arabia that will tell us all about how these new mujahedin aren't really Muslims. The "no true Scotsman" argument is used so frequently by religious fundamentalists that its faux kilt is in dire need of patching from all the wear. They're not really Muslims in the same way that Ted Haggard isn't really Christian. When the true-believers go astray and start blowing up innocent people or molesting a few children or having sex-for-money, it's so easy to disavow them, isn't it?

In light of the UN General Assembly resolution, we're certain to be told that these mass murderers have no association with Islam. They're actually... what? Martians? Mutant ninja turtles? No, they're mujahedin. They're Muslim fundamentalist holy warriors, and their holy war means blowing up bombs and shooting up hotels and train stations. This is religion once again bringing people together... in morgues.

Although Mumbai has been the scene of several terrorist attacks in recent years, experts said Wednesday's assaults required a previously unseen degree of reconnaissance and planning. The scale and synchronization of the attacks pointed to the likely involvement of experienced commanders, some said, suggesting possible foreign involvement.

The terrorists struck almost simultaneously at the city's domestic airport and a railway station and sprayed gunfire at the Leopold Cafe, a restaurant popular with foreigners. As many as 16 groups hit nine sites on the southern flank of this crowded metropolis of 19 million...

Nobody knew, right? This is probably the biggest, most coordinated attack by holy warriors since the Afghan mujahedin were fighting the Soviets a quarter century ago... but nobody knew. No mullahs, no community leaders, nobody. No true Muslims were even complicit in this attack. Amazing. After all,

Islam is frequently and wrongly associated with human rights violations and terrorism.

And how beautiful is this holy war that has been brought against the citizens and workers of Mumbai:

...Wednesday's attacks were a brazen frontal assault using automatic weapons.

The targets included police headquarters in south Mumbai, where some officers were pinned down by gunfire.

The victims included Mumbai's anti-terrorism chief, Hemant Karkare, and two of his senior police officers, which complicated the law enforcement response to the attacks. Television video showed Karkare donning a flak jacket and helmet minutes before heading into one of the hotels.

Witnesses said the attackers appeared to fire at random and made no effort to hide their identities, which, experts suggested, signaled a readiness to die...

How glorious. How noble. This is the will of God in action, is it not, that mujahedin should take up arms and fire randomly at human beings as they go about their daily business.

Across India, more than 3,600 people have been killed in terrorist incidents since January 2004, according to the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center, many involving sectarian disputes...

None of them were killed by Muslim extremists, though, because Islam is wrongly associated with terrorism, just like Catholic priests have been wrongly associated with pederasty. Religious people just don't do this sort of thing.

Aren't we sick of this yet? I'm not talking about Americans or Indians, and I'm not talking about atheists or religious believers. I'm talking about human beings.

Look, I'll be honest. I honestly have no use for religion in my life. I think its widest role in modern civilization is divide people and to hold back the progress of reason in our world. There are plenty of people out there who disagree with me on these points, and that's fine. I don't want to blow any of you up, and I have enough faith in the vast majority of my species to believe that the feeling is mutual.

Still, isn't it about time to confront the fact that much of the violence of the kind that we're seeing in Mumbai, that has been see in India so frequently in recent years, that has happened in the US in places like New York and Oklahoma City, that took place in Guyana 30 years ago, that all of this is tied to religious belief and is justified in the name of doing the work of some deity or another? It's not my place to drum these strains of violence out of religion. People like me are more inclined to chuck the whole thing out and rely on empiricism and empathy, not on allegedly divine laws. It's the place of those within religion to make the changes, if they can be made at all, that will insure that things like what is happening even now in Mumbai never, ever happen again. That can only start when religious moderates come to understand that there is something present in their religion as it is understood by all too many people that calls for war, whether it's a shooting war in India or a culture war in America. When you call for war, you'll find volunteers to carry it out sooner or later.

In Mumbai, those volunteers call themselves the Deccan Mujahedin today. They are terrorists associated with Islam.

The UN General Assembly should spit that stupid anti-blasphemy resolution out like the mouthful of garbage it is and instead start looking into why Islam — and Christianity, Hinduism, Judaism, all of these religions — sooner or later foster the birth of monsters.

The blood of the thousands, the millions, of the victims of dehumanized mujahedin calls out for this. Will it ever get done, or will there be another hundred Mumbai Novembers, 9/11's, Tamil Tiger suicide bombings, holy war without end?

Enough. Enough, enough, enough.

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Religion Does Not Make People Moral: Buddhist Edition

I know it may seem that I pick on Christians, Muslims and Hindus when it comes to finding examples of how religion doesn't make people more moral, even those who are supposed to be deeply and dedicatedly religious. I wouldn't want you to think I'm biased, though.

So I'm sure those who think I make a special effort to go after members of the three religions above will be relieved to see that Buddhism doesn't make people moral, either. Even Buddhist monks can be conniving, thieving bastards.

Cambodian monk charged with raping British woman

A 17-year-old Cambodian monk was charged with raping a British woman while taking her on a tour of a mountain cave near his Buddhist temple, a court official said Thursday...

He has confessed to police that he raped her...

The woman told police the monk had offered to serve as her tour guide on a visit to a cave near the Buddhist temple where he lived and, once there, he threatened to kill her if she resisted his attack, Mey Chhengly said.

The monk also allegedly stole $55 and a cell phone from the woman, he said...

You see, sociopathic, criminal sons of bitches come in all religious flavors. Did this young thug commit his crimes because he is a Buddhist? No. Neither did being a Buddhist monk stop him from committing them.

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Cheney, Gonzalez Indicted in Prison Scandal

Indictments fly: Willacy County DA targets officials
By Emma Perez-Trevino, The Brownsville Herald

A Willacy County grand jury indicted several high-profile public officials on Monday including Vice President Dick Cheney, former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and State Sen. Eddie Lucio Jr.

The indictment charges Cheney with illegally profiting, by virtue of his office, from $85 million in investments in the Vanguard Group. The group invests in companies that house federal detainees. He also is charged with exerting pressure on how much prisons are paid to house detainees.

For now, Cheney's office did not comment. "I haven't seen the indictment," Cheney's spokeswoman Megan Mitchell said Tuesday, indicating that it would be reviewed.

The indictment further alleges that Gonzales used his position to stop investigations into assaults committed in the private prison managed by the GEO Group in Willacy County.

The GEO Group, formerly Wackenhut Corrections Corp., was also indicted on murder charges involving the 2001 death of an inmate killed in a Raymondville prison. The indictment accuses GEO of allowing inmates to beat Gregorio De La Rosa Jr., 33, of Laredo, to death with padlocks stuffed into socks...

No! Say it ain't so! Dick Cheney profiting from inhumanity? Alberto Gonzalez tied to torture? This is America. That kind of thing doesn't happen here. Oh, sure, maybe it happens in places like Iraq and Afghanistan and Cuba, and maybe the occasional suspect is extraordinarily rendered to a secret prison or two somewhere in Eastern Europe to undergo procedures that are illegal on US soil, but it couldn't happen here.

Will this go anywhere? Will we ever see a Cheney perp walk? I doubt it. He'd have to be dug out of his undisclosed location first, and those sent to retrieve him would have to take care not to wind up being shot in the face. Still, it's fun to think about.

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After the Election: Symptoms of an American Pathology

With all of the joyful noise following the last Presidential election,it's sad to have to be reminded that there's still an old sickness in our cultural body that is yet to be cured. Still, it doesn't come as a surprise. Months before the election, the purveyors of hatred were already making their voices heard. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the threats have kept on coming and have gone beyond words to action in some cases. Now that America will have its first president whose skin isn't pinky-beige, whose hair looks a bit different than the Caucasian type, whose father was an African, the venom is ratcheting up.

There have been "hundreds" of incidents since the election, many more than usual, said Mark Potok, director of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate crimes.

Some of the incidents tracked include:

• ...Snellville, Ga., where Denene Millner said a boy on the school bus told her 9-year-old daughter the day after the election: "I hope Obama gets assassinated." That night, someone trashed her sister-in-law's front lawn, mangled the Obama lawn signs, and left two pizza boxes filled with human feces outside the front door...
  
• Four North Carolina State University students admitted writing anti-Obama comments in a tunnel designated for free speech expression, including one that said: "Let's shoot that nigger in the head..."
  
• At Standish, Maine, a sign inside the Oak Hill General Store read: "Osama Obama Shotgun Pool." Customers could sign up to bet $1 on a date when Obama would be killed. "Stabbing, shooting, roadside bombs, they all count," the sign said. At the bottom of the marker board was written "Let's hope someone wins."
  
• Racist graffiti was found in places including New York's Long Island, where two dozen cars were spray-painted
  
• Kilgore, Texas, where the local high school and skate park were defaced; and the Los Angeles area, where swastikas, racial slurs and "Go Back To Africa" were spray painted on sidewalks, houses and cars.
  
• Second- and third-grade students on a school bus in Rexburg, Idaho, chanted "assassinate Obama," a district official said.
  
• University of Alabama professor Marsha L. Houston said a poster of the Obama family was ripped off her office door. A replacement poster was defaced with a death threat and a racial slur...
  
• Black figures were hanged by nooses from trees on Mount Desert Island, Maine, the Bangor Daily News reported...
  
• Crosses were burned in yards of Obama supporters in Hardwick, N.J., and Apolacan Township, Pa.
  
• A black teenager in New York City said he was attacked with a bat on election night by four white men who shouted 'Obama.'
  
• In Forest Hills, PA, a black man said he found a note with a racial slur on his car windshield, saying "now that you voted for Obama, just watch out for your house."

— Source

From sea to shining sea, indeed.

It would be naive to even ask why this is happening. We all know why. The pathology has been around long enough. One might as well ask what causes the common cold or why the sky is blue. There are people in this country who, having accomplished nothing with their own lives, identify their own value — and by extension the value of other human beings — by some easily distinguishable physical trait, some bit of superficial biological coincidence. It's all they've got, and they'll cling to it for all they're worth because it is all they're worth. Call that bit of inconsequential physicality into question and you call their value as a human being into question. You make an enemy who may well take it upon himself to extract vengeance.

That someone who looks different, who doesn't share some valued hue of the flesh with such people, has achieved the nation's highest political office drives such people into a rage. Some meaningful privilege that they'd hoped and believed was connected with their appearance has turned out not to be so connected. It is for this reason that I expect at least one assassination attempt to be made upon Obama. It's a pathetic expectation, I know, but it would be just as naive not to think such an event will come as it is to question the motivation for it in the first place.

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Sometimes I Wish I Believed in Hell

Sometimes I wished that I believed in Hell so that I could also believe that there was a special place reserved in it for jackasses who scrawled swastikas on Holocaust memorials.

Sadly, it happened this time in San Francisco.

Swastikas deface S.F. Holocaust Memorial
Rachel Gordon, Chronicle Staff Writer

The Holocaust Memorial in San Francisco's Lincoln Park has been vandalized for the second time in two months with swastikas penned on the bronze sculpture in the latest incident that city officials learned of Wednesday...

"The Holocaust," as the haunting piece by sculptor George Segal is titled, is made up of 11 life-size figures cast in bronze and then painted white. The figures are positioned behind a barbed-wire fence...

A vandal or vandals used a black ink marker to deface one of the figures, some plaques related to the sculpture and a nearby bench. The markings were similar, with the swastika drawn inside the Jewish Star of David symbol.

Last month, a swastika was scratched into the surface of the artwork, commission officials said. It has been vandalized other times, as well. Police were alerted to the latest defacement Wednesday morning...

Because I don't believe in Hell, all I can hope for is that the morons who did this are caught and given the harshest possible sentence under the law for their cowardly and inhumane act. Well, I can hope that they fall into a vat of honey and stumble into a hive of angry Africanized bees, too, but that's not nearly as likely.

Aside from the sheer hatred for others involved in vandalizing a memorial to victims of mass murder, one has to wonder what the point of doing it is in the first place. It's going to get noticed, after all (otherwise, why do it in the first place?) and fixed immediately. Other than making people possessed of something approaching mental health think you're a blatant anal pore, such an act changes nothing. It's not like someone is going to see your handiwork and think, "Gee, maybe the guy who drew the swastika on the depiction of a Holocaust victim has a point. I think I'll become a Neo-Nazi."

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Mycological Consumer Fraud: Know Thy Shrooms, Dude

Three men in New Hampshire have been arrested for reselling mushrooms they bought at the supermarket. The catch? They were using blue food coloring to make the ubiquitous Agaricus bisporus buttons look more like much more interesting Psilocybe mushroom. I'm not sure who they were going to fool with such a poorly conceived scam. While it's true that hallucinogenic Psilocybe mushrooms stain blue on at least some portion of the fruiting body when bruised, the two species look very different in a number of other ways. It's a bit like trying to pass off carnations as roses. Still, the geniuses did manage to sell $900 worth of their faux magic mushrooms to an undercover police officer in Kingston and have been arrested — and two of them still had the blue food coloring all over their hands.

Fungus fakeout: Three face drug charges
Jason Schreiber, Union Leader

KINGSTON – Three men accused of trying to sell fake hallucinogenic mushrooms have been caught blue-handed.

Police said the men were arrested after one of them sold a quarter-pound of mushrooms for $900 during an undercover drug probe. When police later pulled over the men, two had hands stained with blue food coloring.

Police Chief Donald Briggs Jr. said police believe the mushrooms were purchased at a grocery store along with the blue food coloring used to dye the mushrooms and make them appear more like a potent psilocybin mushroom...

Now really, how dumb were these guys?

I don't advocate the ingestion of Psilocybe mushrooms nor do I condemn it. If you want to suck down a bunch of fungal pesticide evolved to discourage arthropods from consuming the reproductive structure, that's entirely your own business. Mycologically speaking, I don't find Psilocybe a particularly interesting genus. Still, there's a danger to people who do this sort of thing because its entirely possible you could be buying something much more unsavory than Agaricus bisporus when you think you're get P. cubensis or somesuch.

In other words, if you really want some "shrooms, dude," know how to tell you're getting the right thing. As laughable as the clowns in this story are, they had some reason to believe that their scam would work and it's entirely possible that this isn't the first time they've done it. Somebody in New Hampshire, in other words, may have bought from them before and that fact opens up some troubling possibilities. Whatever silly legalities society's moral opposition to intoxication ends up imposing on them, I don't think many of us want to see someone seriously poisoned for such a crime. I don't even want people to get sick. There are some much more toxic common mushrooms out there which could be passed off as Psilocybe than can A. bisporus with a little food coloring. I could easily see some enterprising idiot doing this with an Enteloma, for instance, and certainly a Stropharia can pass for Psilocybe. Even mycologists have a hard time separating the two genera in a satisfying way.

Try this at home. What kind of mushroom is that to the left of this paragraph (click for a larger image)? Can you come up with a reasonable identification to genus? Do you have any idea whether or not it's edible, hallucinogenic or toxic? This is a relatively easy genus to identify, by the way, and the photo contains all of the characters one would need to figure out the genus for this one. Would you eat this?

The moral of the story is, Know Thy Mushroom. If you don't know how to identify a Psilocybe, you probably shouldn't be eating it. You could wind up ripped off by the blue-handed mushroom fakers... or worse. Much, much worse.

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Democratic Party Chairman Murdered in Arkansas

The chairman of the Arkansas Democratic Party, Bill Gwatney, was gunned down at party headquarters in Little Rock, AR yesterday. The gunman in this case was Timothy Johnson. Johnson was a resident of Searcy, Arkansas who had been fired from his job at a local Target store for writing graffiti on a wall at his place of employment shortly before he showed up at Democratic Party headquarters. In a scene reminiscent of Martin Scorcese's Taxi Driver, Johnson told a campaign staffer that he wanted to volunteer, then shot Gwatney several times. Johnson then fled the scene and was eventually shot by the police, who are now looking for a motive in the shooting.

Arkansas Police Seek Motive for Killing of Democratic Official
By Ryan Flinn

Police are searching for a motive after a gunman burst into the Arkansas Democratic Party headquarters in Little Rock and killed Chairman Bill Gwatney.

The man shot the former state senator several times in the upper body yesterday, before fleeing in his vehicle and leading officers on a 30-mile (48-kilometer) chase, said Lieutenant Terry Hastings of the Little Rock Police Department.

The suspect was killed in a shoot-out with police and his victim died later in the hospital, Hastings said. Police are investigating whether the shooter had any connection to Gwatney, he added...

Police identified the suspect as 50-year-old Timothy Johnson of Searcy, a town about 50 miles northeast of Little Rock, the Associated Press reported. He was fired that morning from a local Target store for writing graffiti on a wall, the news agency said.

Moments after shooting Gwatney, he pointed a handgun at a worker at the nearby Arkansas Baptist headquarters and said "I lost my job," AP reported, citing a church official...

Does this sound a little familiar? Is Gwatney the latest casualty of the New and Improved Culture War, now with a body count? Could Johnson have been inspired by prior right-wing extremist foot soldier James Adkisson's shooting of several people in Tennessee recently?

Details about Johnson haven't been released yet, but I suspect there will be a philosophical connection between Johnson and Adkisson. Little Rock police spokesman, lieutenant Terry Hastings, has told the press that there was no known previous connection between Johnson and Gwatney. Perhaps Johnson will have also written some sort of manifesto, as in the Adkisson case, that will reveal his motive for the shooting. It will be interesting to find out what he wrote on the wall at Target and whether there was any connection between that and the shooting. Perhaps we'll be finding out more about Johnson soon.

My money is on him being an Ann Coulter/Rush Limbaugh/Michael Savage fan, maybe a Freeper.

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Fundamentalist Child Murder: When Religion is Homicidal Mania

A story in the Madison, WI Isthmus recounts the case of Madeline Neumann, a child unfortunate enough to have been born to a couple of very, very stupid and deluded parents who refused to get her medical treatment as she died a slow and excruciating death from an easily treated condition. They instead decided to go with witchcraft, seeking to invoke supernatural spooks and fairy tales to heal her. 40 out of 50 US states have laws that allow parents to do this because it protects the faith that they then proceed to inflict upon the innocent.

Death by prayer
by Erik Gunn

...In the days, perhaps weeks, before their daughter died of diabetic ketoacidosis — an illness authorities contend could have been readily treated — Dale and Leilani Neumann refused to seek medical care. They did so despite the girl's worsening condition and despite the urging of family members and friends. Instead, they insisted her body was a battleground in a spiritual war between Jesus Christ and the forces of Hell. Only by resisting worldly medicine, they believed, could she be saved...

Wisconsin law, like that of as many as 40 other states, carries an explicit exemption from prosecution for child abuse or neglect for parents who forgo medical treatment for their children on religious grounds and instead seek "treatment...through prayer..."

The Neumanns were readers of and occasional contributors to a website called Unleavened Bread Ministries (www.unleavenedbreadministries.org). The banner across its top proclaims, "Warning: These are America's Last Days."

Unleavened Bread Ministries is operated by David Eells, a self-appointed preacher in Pensacola, Fla. It's filled with predictions of impending apocalypse and assertions that people can be healed of illness through faith and prayer. One page features 63 separate testimonials to miraculous cures ranging from cancer and birth defects to hay fever and "uneven tire wear" on a car..."

Det. Sgt. Dennis Halkoski asked if the family ever thought about taking their daughter to the doctor. "No," Leilani replied. "We just thought it was a spiritual attack and we prayed for her." When her husband suggested getting medical care, "I said, the Lord's going to heal her, and we continued to pray."

A search of the Neumann home that evening showed the couple had sought emergency help — just not from a doctor. The day before the girl died, Dale Neumann had emailed David Eells' website seeking the preacher's direct number: "We need agreement in prayer over our youngest daughter, who is very weak and pale at the moment with hardly any strength," the message pleaded.

The reply, though not from Eells, was in the form of a prayer, which read in part: "We thank You Father for giving Dale and Leilani the faith to hold fast to the confession of their hope that it waver not, for it is Your will Father that Kara was already healed, I Peter 2:24. We add faith to Dale's and Leilani's and command Kara to be healed. We command that spirit of infirmity to loose Kara now, leave her body, leave her home, and go back from where it came and stay there...."

So these primitivists murmured to an ancient Near Eastern sky-god who — surprise, surprise — didn't show up, and their kid died. She died over the course of days, perhaps weeks. She died slowly, terribly and unnecessarily. It would have been kinder of the oh-so-pious Neumanns if they had simply put a pillow over her face and had done with it. They could have prayed for DA LAWD to obviate Madeline's need for oxygen as she struggled and thrashed beneath the weight of this self-created test of their faith. The outcome would have been exactly the same.

Laws in many states that effectively shift the responsibility for acts such as that perpetrated by homicidal child-abusers like the Neumanns to the deity that never materializes, however. It protects delusional belief over the very real well-being of very real people who go through very real suffering and die very real deaths.

...In 1998, Swan and University of California-San Diego pediatrician Seth Asser published an article in the medical journal Pediatrics based on their review of 172 deaths of children between 1975 and 1995 whose parents had withheld medical care on religious grounds. They concluded that 140 of those children — 80% — would have had a 90% chance of survival had they received conventional medical care; another 18 would have had a 50% survival rate.

"They died of very simple things," says Swan. "Lots of diabetes deaths. Lots of infectious diseases that are readily treated with antibiotics."

And in virtually every state, prosecutors were prevented from bringing neglect charges, because the parents had relied on spiritual healing. Swan traces those laws to a mid-1970s federal mandate, which she says was lobbied for by the Christian Science Church and Christian Scientists...

...only a handful of states have repealed or narrowed the exemptions. Wisconsin has not. State statute 948.03(6) still says a person is not guilty of failing to protect children from harm "solely because he or she provides a child with treatment by spiritual means through prayer alone for healing in accordance with the religious method for healing...in lieu of medical or surgical treatment."

This statute drew some attention in 2003, when a 4-year-old autistic child, Terrence Cottrell, was crushed to death in Milwaukee during an attempted exorcism by a self-taught preacher...

..."It is time for that law to be repealed," says Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-president of the Madison-based Freedom From Religion Foundation. "The law is a green light for parents to think they don't have any responsibility to society [regarding how] they treat their children. The state should be stepping in here to do everything it can to discourage faith healing in place of medical care."

Any such attempt, however, will face opposition from the Christian Science Church, which is among the most established religious groups that promote the use of prayer to treat physical ailments.

"We deplore the abuse and neglect of children under any circumstances," says Farkas, the church's Wisconsin lobbyist. He says Christian Scientists "don't claim that all cases of religious objections to medical care should be free from legal limitations." And it would be "willing to work with legislators" on any efforts to redraft the law.

But the church would not want the law changed in a way that would expose its members to prosecution for practicing spiritual healing.

"The Christian Science Church has documented 125 years of healings that have occurred through prayer" since it was founded in 1879, says Farkas. "Spiritual healing through prayer definitely has a place in society..."

I think part of Farkas' statement must have been left out of the article. It should read in full, "We deplore the abuse and neglect of children under any circumstances in which it has not been given sanction by a bunch of bizarre mumbo-jumbo propounded by people like me."

The proper place for spiritual healing in society is right alongside shaking knucklebones over a dead cat to ward off the evil eye and burning incense and pubic hairs in a campfire to win love, because they are exactly the same thing. There is no difference between praying over someone to heal their sickness and any other sort of occult nonsense. None, zero, zip. Whether the people who engage in unacceptable, harmful behavior like the Neumanns believe that aid will come from an invisible superfriend or that by taking poison they'll be taken aboard flying saucers as was the case with Marshall Applewhite and Heaven's Gate, personal belief should not be an excuse to commit homicide. If it is, why shouldn't it be perfectly legal to drive through the streets of a large city shooting prostitutes if one's religious belief is that prostitution violates the will of Jehovah? Why shouldn't Fred Phelps be allowed to blow up gay bars? After all, he and his incestuous little tribe firmly believe that "God hates fags." Shall we as a society excuse murder in cases wherein the perpetrator deeply and sincerely believes in his mission from God?

Indeed, the state of Massachusetts, which repealed its own exemption law, is now considering reinstating a narrower form. Boston lawyer Stephen Lyons, who helped defend Christian Scientists convicted — and later acquitted — of homicide in the death of their child 13 years ago, says the new bill would let parents charged in such cases cite belief in spiritual healing as a defense.

Lyons equates families who act on their beliefs about spiritual healing with a long line of pioneers seeking religious liberty. He contends that cases like the one he handled and the one involving the Neumanns are often distorted in a swirl of publicity and prejudice.

"Ketoacidosis is something that kills children in hospitals every day," he says. "But we never second-guess the doctors because we assume that they do their best. But the parents of children who died of these illnesses never get the benefit of the same assumption. What gets lost is what they were seeing, what they were experiencing. No one seems to want to find out about the reasonableness of their conduct....

First off, HELL NO. This is the first I've heard of Massachusetts considering allowing even a few instances of death-by-Jesus to children and I doubt that it will pass. Lyons statement is a bunch of ridiculous gibberish. Who cares what the parents are experiencing? Do we make a special exemption under the law for this? "The one thing that gets lost here is that the crackhead who shot the clerk in the course of the robbery really believed that the clerk would rise from the dead in a few hours" isn't admissible, is it?

And what is this nonsense about nobody second-guessing doctors? Those silly physicians are paying exorbitant premiums for malpractice insurance for no reason, because nobody ever thinks for a moment that they could possibly have been negligent! I mean, when was the last time a physician was sued by the family of a child who died while under her care? That simply doesn't happen.

What is "getting lost" to Lyons' well-funded but apparently very small intellect is that he's full of crap. Doctors get sued all the time when something goes wrong under their charge; they are held accountable and investigated, a situation that becomes even more likely when a child dies from a relatively easily-treated condition like that which killed Madeline Neumann. In her case, she wasn't under the care of a physician or hospital, she was under the care of her parents. Just as would be a doctor who refused to provide treatment and thereby caused someone's death, Dan and Leilani Neumann should be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law for facilitating the death of their daughter. Who wouldn't agree with the idea of charging a doctor who eschewed medicine or surgery in favor of mumbling incantations by the bedside with at least negligent homicide? Doctors are second-guessed every day; the Neumanns did it themselves. Every faith healer does it, ever New Age shaman who swallows herbal concotions does it, every homeopath who foists off water on their "patients" does it, and every patient and family member who takes the time to learn about the treatment that they or a loved one are receiving does it. That one or more of these people might believe deeply that angels and aliens are a better hope for healing than is modern medicine is immaterial.

People like Dale and Leilani Neumann don't need a special exemption under the law. We already have a plea that can be entered by those who believe that supernatural entities are commanding them to undertake a criminal course of action to the extent that they disregard reality. IT's called not guilty by reason of insanity. If homicidal faith-healers, the Leilani Neumanns and Joe Farkases of this country, can't tell on their own that what they're doing is wrong, that's the correct plea for them. Then they can be given proper therapy until the voices in their heads commanding them to kill have ceased and they stop being a danger to others.

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Biologists Bombed in Santa Cruz in the Name of Protecting Fruit Flies

Numerous UC Santa Cruz biologists have been threatened in pamphlets left at a coffee house in California. The home of one was bombed on Saturday while he and his family were at home. A car belonging to a second researcher, whose name has not yet been released, was also bombed and a third researcher received a threatening phone call but no explosives were found on the scene.

The reason for the bombings? One of the biologists, David Feldheim, studies the development of the nervous system of mice in order to learn how the brain and eyes work together and thereby lay down basic research that can someday be used to treat those who have lost their sight to illness or injury. A second one works on Drosophila. He was attacked for using fruit flies in his experiments. Of course, we get the obligatory statement from outspoken nutsack Jerry Vlasak about how this is justified because fruit flies have rights and it's OK to bomb people's homes to defend them. I guess that when you're a fruitcake it seems logical to defend the supposed rights of fruit flies "by any means necessary."

Santa Cruz firebombs look familiar
Wyatt Buchanan and Demian Bulwa, San Francisco Chronicle

The devices used in two firebombings targeting UC Santa Cruz biologists are similar to some used in the past by animal rights activists, investigators said Sunday.

The bombs were so powerful they were like "Molotov cocktails on steroids," said Santa Cruz police Capt. Steve Clark.

One struck the home of assistant biology Professor David Feldheim on Saturday morning, forcing him to flee with his family. The other exploded just a few minutes earlier, gutting a car parked outside the campus home of a second researcher.

Later, Santa Cruz County sheriff's deputies went to the home of a third researcher who received a threatening telephone message, but officers found no explosives.

More than 50 investigators, including some from the FBI's regional terrorism task force, are looking into the attacks.

Feldheim, whose townhouse was firebombed just after 5:30 a.m., uses mice in laboratory research on brain formation.

He told The Chronicle that he and his wife, along with their 7-year-old son and 6-year-old daughter, had to drop a ladder from the window of a second-floor bedroom to escape after smoke filled the home's first floor...

Feldheim was treated at a hospital and released, police said. Clark said the attack on Feldheim is being considered an act of terrorism and attempted murder.

Clark said the bomb at Feldheim's house was similar to those used by animal rights extremists in the past, adding, "There are instructions on how to make it on their Web sites."

Feldheim and the unidentified faculty member who received the threatening message were named on pamphlets that were left on a stack of newspapers in a downtown Santa Cruz coffee shop last Tuesday, Clark said. The unsigned pamphlets at Caffe Pergolesi, which printed 13 researchers' pictures and addresses, called them murderers and torturers and said, "Animal abusers everywhere beware."

The name of the researcher whose car was bombed was not on the pamphlets, Clark said...

A different view was expressed today by Jerry Vlasak, a Los Angeles spokesman for the North American Animal Liberation Press Office, which often posts on its Web site communiques from activists taking credit for attacks. He said the benefit of animal research does not justify its expense or the exploitation of animals.

Vlasak said the bombers likely were not trying to hurt Feldheim, but were instead "trying to send a message to this guy, who won't listen to reason, that if he doesn't stop hurting animals, more drastic measures will be taken ... it's certainly not an initial tactic, but a tactic of last resort."

Feldheim, whose work includes introducing genes into living mouse brains, said Sunday that his research "is aimed at understanding how brain connections form during development, with special focus on the visual system." He said the work is important "so we can learn how to fix these connections after damage due to injury or disease..."

Jerry Vlasak is the leader of a bona fide terrorist organization and makes no bones about it. Why he's walking around free is beyond me. This mujahadeen should be spooning with a large convict bearing a neck tattoo in a cell in federal prison. Our government has managed to sweep up numerous individuals in Afghanistan and hold them without charge for years in Cuba but they can't manage to round up Vlasak and his stinky hippie axis of evil and provide them the due process to which they are entitled? Sounds like extreme incompetence to me — either that or it simply hasn't been a priority. The current administration doesn't care much for science, after all, so how much priority have they given to putting a stop to this?

The Chronicle article refers to these incidents as "an escalation in a series of protests against UC researchers." This isn't an escalation of protest; these are bombings. Someone's home was set on fire and the lives of himself and his children were immediately put in peril by a group of lunatics who are more concerned with the lives of mice and fruit flies than they are with those of humans. That's not "protest," that is, as FBI investigators point out, attempted murder. If I march outside of a business while carrying a sign, if I sit in the doorway and refuse to move, that's protest. The moment I take out a gun and start firing at office workers, it ceases to be protest and starts to be attempted murder. By the standard used in calling this an "escalation of protest," Jim Adkisson was protesting when he opened fire in a church last week. Buchanan and/or Bulwa should be ashamed of themselves for using that word to describe the bombing of someone's home. Is it an "escalation of protest" if I were to be so incensed by this that I waited for them in the Chronicle's parking lot with a machete? Somehow, I don't think they'd use the word "protest" in describing the incident to the police while ambulance attendance packed their severed digits in ice; they'd rightly use words like "assault" and "attempted murder" and "unjustified attack" and "maniac." Acts of violence, attempts at murder, are not legitimate protest. Setting fire to a house containing a seven year old child is even further from it.

Jerry Vlasak's moronic assertion that the bombers didn't mean to hurt Feldheim and his family is so unbelievably stupid that the man should be taken into protective custody at the very least to insure that he doesn't cause himself injury by wandering into a busy intersection. Anybody who buys a statement like that should be treated likewise. The intent of this terrorist act was precisely to cause harm. Feldheim had to be taken to the hospital. The house filled with smoke and the people inside were lucky enough to be able to escape by climbing out of a second-story window. Who in their right mind wouldn't see not only the physical damage that has been done here but the psychological harm that has been done to the victims? How well will Feldheim's children be sleeping? How many nightmares have been inspired, how much fear, how much trauma?

Mice and fruit flies don't have any rights at all. They're born, maybe they reproduce, and they end up as sustenance for some predator. Rights are a social and political construct; insects and rodents have no concept of such things. By the same token, the terrorists involved in these incidents — including Vlasak — should lose all of their rights. They've demonstrated their violent intent toward society and should lose the benefits of membership therein. Vlasak's rights should extend at this point only to that of remaining silent and having an attorney present, and to a speedy trial, and those are the only ones to which he is entitled. He and his junior Unabomber crew deserve even less consideration than do the mice and flies whose lives they consider more valuable than those of the human beings who have dedicated their lives to better understanding the biology and ecology of those creatures for the benefit not only of humans but of the natural world itself — a world which the terrorists themselves don't begin to understand and care nothing about.

As members of civilized society, however, I do think we should give these monsters what they want once they're appropriately rounded up. We can dress them in organic orange jumpsuits and leave them manacled to trees and rocks in the wilderness and let them commune with nature all they like for the day or two that they'd survive their punishment. I still think they have a valuable role to play in the magnificent web of being that is life on earth. They can do community service by explaining to bears, rats, mountain lions, mosquitoes and ants the rights to which they believe the animals are entitled as their entrails are being extracted and maggots hatch in their eye sockets. We can even reduce the duration of their sentences if they can remember the words to "The Circle of Life" while they're being consumed by their clients.

Once they've become bear burgers and vulture vittles, those of us who actually do care about the well-being of this planet and its inhabitants enough to dedicate ourselves to understanding how it all works together will be able to get back to work without pondering whether or not we should be arming ourselves against a cowardly militia of malodorous malefactors.

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Faith, Morality and the Body in the Icebox: Alabama Evangelical Preacher Anthony Hopkins

Another story for the ever-increasing mountain of "religion does not make people moral" evidence comes slithering up from Alabama. Evangelical preacher Anthony Hopkins, described by Pastor Jerry Porter of the Williams Street Holiness Church as being "a bulls-eye prophet. If he told you something, you could pretty much bank on it," raped his children, murdered his wife when she caught him in the act, stuffed her body in a freezer, and then lied about it and continued his career as a preacher for years, right up to the moment he was finally arrested — after police let him finish his last sermon. Predictably, that sermon was about the importance of forgiveness. Who better to stress the import of letting bygones be bygones than a man who now faces criminal charges including rape, incest and murder?

Preacher killed wife, stuffed body in freezer, police say
by CNN

An evangelical preacher killed his wife several years ago and stuffed her body in a freezer after she caught him abusing their daughter, according to police and court documents.

Anthony Hopkins, 37, was arrested Monday night at the Inspirational Tabernacle Church of God in Christ in Jackson, Alabama, just after he had delivered a sermon to a congregation that included his seven other children, officials said.

He faces charges including murder, rape, sodomy, sexual abuse and incest.

Hopkins was denied bail Thursday when he appeared before Mobile County District Judge George Hardesty. The case is set for arraignment next week, Hardesty's clerk said.

The case began Monday, when the daughter, now 19, went to the Mobile Police Department's Child Advocacy Center and reported that she had been sexually abused by Hopkins since she was 11 years old, according to an affidavit filed in support of a search warrant of the preacher's home in Mobile.

The affidavit related the daughter's story as follows:

Her mother, Arletha Hopkins, 36, caught her father abusing her in a bathroom in November 2004. Afterward, her parents argued, and her mother locked her father out of the house. The father came to the daughter's window and asked her to let him in, and she did so.

The next morning, her father asked her to help him hide her mother's body in the freezer in the laundry room of the home.

The girl said she moved out of the home about two weeks ago and was living with a neighbor. She told police that her mother's body was still in the freezer.

When authorities went to the home, no one was there, as Hopkins and the other children were at the church. A body was found in the freezer, the affidavit says...

At the Inspirational Tabernacle Church of God in Christ, Hopkins was preaching at a revival, pastor Beverly Jackson told CNN affiliate WKRG. His message, she said, was about forgiveness and not passing judgment -- and at one point, he turned to his seven children and asked them to forgive him his past, present and future.

Police allowed Hopkins to finish his sermon before arresting him, Jackson said. She said she asked police why they were arresting him and was told, "he murdered his wife..."

An investigation has not found any record of Arletha Hopkins' existence since 2004, according to the affidavit. Asked how long police think the body had been in the freezer, Garrett said, "I'm thinking that she's probably been there for a number of years."

He said Anthony Hopkins did not have a regular church but apparently preached in various areas around the South.

"Part of the mystery here is that, apparently, none of these children were in school" but were being home-schooled, Mobile County District Attorney John Tyson said...

Anthony Hopkins, he said, made statements that led him to believe all was not well at home. "He always used to tell me ... 'You're blessed in the fact that you have a wife that supports you and what you're trying to do for God,' " Porter said.

He said Arletha Hopkins disappeared shortly after the couple's youngest child was born. As rumors swirled, Porter said, he confronted Hopkins and asked whether his wife was dead. Hopkins "wouldn't give me an answer," he said.

After that, Porter said, he banned him from the church but remained on good terms with him.

He said he visited the family a few years ago, and their home was clean and well-kept.

"It was the ideal family. I mean, the children were so respectful, just so easygoing," Porter said. "Didn't seem to be no stress at all. Never got that impression, never."

The children, he said, "loved their dad. They were very close to him..."

Porter knew enough to ban Hopkins from his church but didn't notify the authorities that he believed that Hopkins' wife, Arletha might be dead. It took the daughter that Hopkins was molesting to come forward years after the fact to start the investigation. For Porter to say that this was an "ideal family" and praise the "respectful" (perhaps terrified?) children who "loved ther dad" speaks to the fact that there are still some very twisted individuals lurking about in the churches of Jackson, AL. Maybe someone ought to have a look into what this Porter fellow has been up to as well. Was he just practicing the forgiveness and absence of judgment for which Hopkins was such a forceful advocate, or does he have a few skeletons in his closet — or freezer, in this case?

In the case of Anthony Hopkins, we have a man who, when not busy sodomizing his children or stuffing corpses into refrigerators, dedicated himself to preaching the gospel. His life apparently revolved around evangelical Christianity, and these did not make him into a moral person. For the hard-of-reading, let me note before I am accused of saying something that I am not saying here that I do not assert that his religious beliefs turned him into a monster. What I'm saying is that being religious didn't prevent him from becoming one, nor did they make him any more moral than he would have been without them. Hopkins clearly felt no compunction in telling others how they should conduct their lives after he had conducted his by indulging in his incestuous and murderous desires.

Nonetheless, he's still a "man of God." He is due a certain amount of respect by the faithful, as evidenced by his being allowed to conclude his speech to the Inspirational Tabernacle Church of God in Christ on how others should be forgiving and non-judgmental. He gave this speech while the police were discovering the body of his wife in the freezer where he'd hidden it four years ago, enlisting the aid of the child he was raping in the endeavor.

Is it anymore unusual that ultra-religious people do these things than non-religious people? The list of names of religious monsters grows a bit longer every day. Hopkins joins a stellar roll that includes BTK Killer Dennis Rader, John List, Jim Jones...

Sadly, true believers will still go about truly believing that people who have memorized the bible and deliver convincing rhetoric based upon it are somehow more trustworthy than those of us who think the whole thing nonsense. Atheists, you see, have no reason to be moral, since we're not afraid of divine retribution... unlike Anthony Hopkins.

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The Right Wing Reacts to Tennessee UU Church Murders

Here's a quick sampling of some opinions expressed on FreeRepublic.com regarding the murders that took place in Tennessee. You can stop reading when you find something that sounds sane in this.

What the hell is a Unitarian Universalist Church? That sounds like something a handful of warmed-over flatliners dreamed up after hitting the bong once too often. What are its tenets? Its dogma?

— ought-six

...I once read somewhere that

Jeffrey Dahmer is a registered Democrat...

— forYourChildrenVote4Bush

Did you hear the one about the two Unitarian Universalists that were doing mission work? They came up to a door, rang the bell and when the homeowner answered, they asked: 'Hello, may we speak with you a moment? What do we believe about God?'

— WorkingClassFilth

Well, they have some sole searching to do. What did they do to cause this person feel so aggrieved that he would want to kill them?

This was not so much a crime, as a desperate cry for help.

— tsomer

This guys can't be a conservative.

By picking up a gun, he just became one of them (liberals). Or, maybe, he has been a liberal all along and don't know it.

Isn't this crazy? But, then, isn't liberalism nuts?

— Ben Reyes

He maybe guilty of the action but there have been many cases were people did things only to save their families that were being held hostage.

Everything must be considered before the verdict is read.

— Steve Van Doorn

The Unitarian Church is sort of like Obama, no morals, no direction, just a lot of feel good fluff

— Merlinator

It was probably a mini-rally for The Obamassiah and they were singing "The sun will come out tomorrow ....". Otherwise, a musical about a poor orphan (Annie) who is befriended by a rich capitalist (Daddy Warbucks), doesn't really fit the UU agenda. Now maybe, if there were a lesbian relationship between Annie and Mommy Warbucks or Annie got pregnant and had to get raise money for an abortion, that would be truly a part of the UU world view.

— reg45

This nation has long been in need of a good dose of ".44 Law."

— Roccus

...What do you expect? God is NOT in the center of this church. Human beings are.

— Ben Reyes

This is why there was a loaded Glock concealed beneath my sport coat this morning, and every morning I am at church. Oh, and an extra clip in case they're fat or I miss.

— DaveLoneRanger

To be clear on the matter, there are some Freepers who have expressed sympathy, and a large number who are willing to let God pass judgment on the victims (and on Adkisson, for that matter). The point of this quick-and-dirty list is to simply to provide supporting evidence that there is a sizable and vocal contingent of extremists in our country right now who have more problems with the idea of a non-traditional church and with liberal social ideas than they do with someone who responds to these things with a murderous act.

Some of us are grappling with what happened to the victims. Others are looking for reasons that justify their having become victims. I don't think it will take too long for Adkisson to be portrayed as someone who struck a blow for patriotism by some of this latter set of lunatics who have already fantasized about doing something similar.

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The Memetics of Evil: Liberal Hunting License

It's my blog and I'll obsess if I want to.

The murder of two people by Jim Adkisson at a liberal church has had me thinking a great deal about why things like this happen. I have noticed that the right-wing's explanation for Adkisson's actions is predominately that he was a mental case. It's hard to disagree with that. In my estimation, and I would like to believe that of the majority of American human beings of all political persuasions, anyone who attempts to address their grievances with a shotgun blast is disordered.

Still, there are plenty of deranged individuals walking around unrestrained these days. Some of them are even prone to violence, and the target of their rage has some explanation. Violent people rarely choose a random target; they usually (perhaps always) pick a mark that has some significance to them. That usually means someone who is visibly different in some way. Various psychopaths have targeted those of other ethnicities, or women, or the elderly. They choose their targets based on a distinction, and that distinction has a meaning to them. The significance doesn't arise in a vacuum, either. There may be some personal trauma involved or they may be acting on messages they believe that they're receiving.

It's valid to ask, certainly, why Jim D. Adkisson decided that his hatred would be focused on liberals. Liberals don't look different and, by and large, don't act differently than non-liberals. You can't pick the liberal from the crowd based on their pigmentation or mannerisms. A liberal in a suit looks exactly like a conservative in a suit or a Communist in a suit, for that matter.

Adkisson was almost certainly acting on messages from the media. Somebody told him, in his interpretation, that killing people with a particular social and political philosophy was the right thing to do in order to solve not only his own problems but those of others like him. He even wore a sort of a uniform when carrying out his imagined mission.

A brief dig around the internet this morning yielded such a message with very little effort. It looks like this:

You can buy these from a website calling itself The Patriot Shop for $1.50 each. According to the website:

All sales proceeds at PatriotShop.US support our Mission of Service to America's Armed Services, and help ensure that The Patriot Post is distributed to hundreds of thousands of military personnel and students without a fee...

So, a bunch of people who have fantasies about shooting liberals and sell a product that endorses that fantasy call themselves "patriots" and seeks to influence the military (people with guns). The message here is that it is not only acceptable to shoot liberals, it's patriotic. It's what people who love their country enough to defend it ought to be doing. Anyone who sees humor in this sort of thing is already well on their way down the twisting path of psychopathy. The thought of killing another human being is only funny to those lacking any sense of empathy, the very basis of morality. This isn't patriotism, it's pathology.

This is precisely the kind of message that people like Jim Adkisson are prone to picking up. I have no reason to believe that he ever saw this particular example, of course. The point is that this type of message has been rather prevalent in the media over the past few years. If it weren't, there'd be no market for "liberal hunting licenses."

People who are attracted to this sort of meme aren't patriots, they're problems. They're very big problems waiting to happen. Violent imaginings always precede violent acts, and the people who accept messages embodied in things like the above "hunting license" have already thought about doing things like what Jim Adkisson did to the Tennessee Valley UU Church. If there were such a thing as liberal hunting licenses, they would be lining up to buy them. If they believed that they could get away without penalty for killing those with whom they disagree, you can rest assured that they'd be doing it.

While watching CNN last night, I heard a psychologist (I forget his name) describe Adkisson as a coward because he was hoping that the police would kill him rather than killing himself. I don't see the basis for that statement. Adkisson may well have seen himself as a martyr for the cause, and being gunned down by the police would have helped to establish that aura in his own mind. In his own mind, Adkisson almost certainly making a stand for what he believed in. In his world of violent fantasies, he was a heroic patriot who was answering a call. The enemy had been identified; someone had to do something about it.

If only he could have purchased a hunting license.

If you have a moment, why not contact the management of The Patriot Shop and let them know what you think of their liberal hunting license... and their continuing to sell it in light of events in Knoxville.

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