I don’t think anyone’s religion should be above criticism, but there’s criticism, and there’s throwing a match on a gasoline soaked keg of powder, by doing it in a way that is bound to be deeply offensive. Eugene Volokh has a link to the poorly acted, low-budget film that lit the fuse. It is critical, but in a deliberately provocative way. Imagine how strong Christians would react to a depiction of Jesus going down on Mary Magdalene? You can bet the reaction would be non-violent, but I wouldn’t blame them for being just as deeply offended as many Muslims will no doubt be upon seeing this video.
This is not to excuse what’s going on in North Africa; the reaction of the mob is unconscionable. But it seems to me this would be not the way to persuade people to adopt more tolerant and less militant interpretations of Islam. This will just drive fence sitters to the militants.
It was exiting to live in a time where we walked the earth with such pioneers. Not many of them are left, and we are not replacing them. We haven’t been back since Apollo was cancelled in the early 70s. I think the next time man sets foot on the moon, it will be a commercial venture, rather than a government one.
I used to think this was a sign of the end times, with kids these days not wanting to drive like normal, independently minded people. But then someone pointed out to me the government has systematically destroyed the value of drivers’ licenses for young people, and by the time they are old enough for the licenses to matter, they are off to college where the need to drive is less, then once out of college, they don’t have jobs to make payments on new cars anyway, and are often buried under mountains of student debt. So perhaps Ford and the other companies need to get together and tell the auto insurers, who pushed a lot of this nanny state crap, that the gig is going to be up for both of them if they don’t do something to restore the market. Perhaps making it easier for young people to drive, as it was when I was younger, is the key to fixing this problem, rather than dumb corporations trying to slick up their marketing, and wondering why it’s not working.
I disagree with the Family Research Council’s views on gays and lesbians. But it’s absurd to put the group, as the law center does, in the same category as Aryan Nations, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, Stormfront and the Westboro Baptist Church. The center says the FRC “often makes false claims about the LGBT community based on discredited research and junk science.†Exhibit A in its dossier is a quote by an FRC official from 1999 (!) saying that “gaining access to children has been a long-term goal of the homosexual movement.â€
Offensive, certainly. But in the same category as the KKK?
As I said, I’m not a fan of FRC’s political agenda, but putting them into the same category as the KKK is not only wrong, because it suggests beliefs held by millions of mainstream Americans are “hate,” but because it also cheapens the horror of exactly what the KKK stands and stood for. Given some of the hateful and false rhetoric about gun owners that is accepted and promoted by groups like Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, pretty clearly they would qualify as a hate group under SPLC’s standard.
I am not FRC’s biggest fan either, and disagree with a great deal of what they advocate. But in this country, we don’t shoot people because we disagree with them. Decisive and quick action by the security guard, after he had been shot, probably prevented this from turning into a mass shooting. Looks like everyone is going to be OK, though.
In an interview with KPRC, a local television station, Caffall’s stepfather, Richard Weaver, said Caffall was a “ticking time bomb†who quit his job nine months ago and vowed never to work again.
“He was crazy as hell,” Weaver said. “At one point, we were afraid that he was going to come up here and do something to his mother and me.”
Now the question is, who else knew this guy was “crazy as hell,” and did nothing?
Unfortunately, the clip doesn’t have much of Dave Kopel in it, but here’s some from the transcript. He goes below the belt on Morgan, which is richly deserved:
KOPEL: Well, of course it doesn’t mean what you just said. But we — I think Americans look at the experience of England where we — you went from a country with zero gun control laws in the early 20th century to now something that’s acknowledged as having the most severe gun laws in the western world.
And in that period, you went from a very, very low crime area to a place where the crime rate really went up by 50 times and now according to a joint study by the U.S. Department of Justice and the British Home Office, the UK has a higher violent crime rate, significantly, than the U.S.
(CROSSTALK)
MORGAN: Yes, but let jump in —
KOPEL: According to the United Nations —
MORGAN: Hang on, hang on, hang on.
KOPEL: — Scotland is the most violent country in the industrial world.
MORGAN: You used this — you used this with me last time.
KOPEL: You have more violence because you have no self-defense.
MORGAN: You used this with me last time. It’s completely untrue. The reality about the British gun situation is actually, particularly because of the new handgun rules brought in the mid-’90s after the Dunblane atrocity. In fact, gun crime and murders from guns are on a rapid decline throughout Britain. And, you know, I think —
(CROSSTALK)
KOPEL: We’re talking about total crime.
MORGAN: Wait a minute.
KOPEL: Totally destroyed our —
MORGAN: You also throw at me — you also throw at me Norway, and said, look, it even happens in Norway.
KOPEL: No, you’re confusing me with John (INAUDIBLE).
MORGAN: The reality about Norway is, Norway had a massacre. Most countries at some stage have a crazy person who commits an atrocity. But Norway in an average year, the last audited figures, I think, from 2005, it had five killings from guns. America last year, what, 11,000, 12,000? There is a massive difference here.
KOPEL: Well, Dan, I think, made a point that other countries with no guns have higher homicide rates than the United States. But the point is, you think — you’re fixated on guns. In America, we look at the harms of guns like them being on the wrong hands and also the benefits like crime deterrents.
The reason that Britain has a much higher burglary rate than the United States and the most British burglaries take place when the families are home is because Britain has outlawed self-defense with a firearm. Studies of American —
(CROSSTALK)
DERSHOWITZ: That is ridiculous.
I’ll summarize this for you. The administration’s official position is that it wants the Assault Weapons Ban renewed. But the White House is not going to push for it in Congress. Too many other more important things. In the mean time, they’ll be improving the background checks, though they offer no specifics on how exactly they plan to do that.
…The temple’s president, 65-year-old Satwant Kaleka, was shot dead by the attacker after trying to fight back.
His son Amardeep said that the community leader had attempted to ‘knife and tackle the shooter’, but was unsuccessful and died of his wounds while trying to hide in the temple.
