One of the values of free speech is that it lets you spot the idiots.

This guy should not be punished for his opinions, but you have to wonder about how he treats "white" or Republican students.

Perhaps there should be more diversity on college campuses and more free speech?

Let's play "Spot the Idiot!"

"Liberals talking about the Boston Bombing" edition.

Let's play another round of "Spot the Idiot."

This week's winners are Jim Carrey and Jason Biggs.

Here's a great idea - they ought to show a movie depicting a scene in which a woman is beaten, raped, hung upside down and skinned...

....a prison population filled with violent prisoners and rapists.

Administrators let offenders at one of Iowa's most dangerous prison units watch violent and sexually explicit movies and TV shows for years, despite repeated complaints from a female officer who said it encouraged inmates to sexually harass her.

 

Murderers, sexual predators and other men housed at a unit for mentally ill inmates at the maximum-security state prison in Fort Madison were allowed to watch movies such as "Deranged," a horror film that includes a scene in which a woman is beaten, raped, hung upside down and skinned. Among other movies inmates watched were "Delta of Venus," an erotic film; "Coffey," which shows sadism and attempted rape; and "Cruel Intentions," records show.

 

Despite correctional officer Kristine Sink's complaints, administrators told her not to turn off the movies or shows. When she did, they accused her of insubordination, according to department records that Sink provided to The Associated Press. One warden blamed Sink for causing problems by complaining, and another supervisor suggested her outfits — a standard-issue uniform — were enticing inmates.

 

Sink said she has fought a lonely battle under four wardens against movies that caused inmates to become sexually aggressive — through "10 years of misery." She filed a lawsuit Nov. 30 against prison officials alleging sexual harassment, discrimination and workplace retaliation, seeking an unspecified amount of damages.

 

Put aside the sexual harassment angle, why would anyone think doing that even one time could ever be a good idea?

Great moments in public discourse.

First, I think we need to stop firing people for what they say on Facebook. I'd rather have people demonstrating that they are idiots, than not.

Second, the Loomis case is an example of why the "spot the idiot" game is so useful. According to Glen Reynolds:

DAVID HENDERSON: Free Speech for Me but Not for Thee: The Case of Erik Loomis.

It turns out, by the way, that Crooked Timber also misled by omission. Everyone knows that the expression “head on a stick” is a metaphor, and that is how Crooked Timber defended Loomis. But see here for some of his truly vile comments. Crooked Timber quoted none of these.
Also, the other person, besides the people at Crooked Timber, who is unwilling to defend freedom of speech is . . . Erik Loomis. When given a chance to clarify his views on LaPierre, he wrote, “Dear rightwingers, to be clear, I don’t want to see Wayne LaPierre dead. I want to see him in prison for the rest of his life.”
And what would he want LaPierre in prison for? For murder? No. It would be for speaking out in favor of, and lobbying for, people’s right to own guns. So, again, “freedom of speech for me, but not for thee.”

That’s consistent with their general approach. They’re lefty-defenders, not liberty-defenders.

Plus this: “Reading how vile the comments of this ‘gifted young scholar’ were, I did start thinking that, at a minimum, some people at URI should occasionally monitor his class or question his students to find out whether he brings anywhere close to that amount of venom to discussions with students who disagree with him.”

And, from the comments: “One irony of all this: While FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education) is already at work defending Loomis against possible sanction by URI, I doubt very much that Loomis himself would be supportive of other work FIRE does to protect the rights of students who, for example, agree with Wayne LaPierre.”

We are much better off having Leftists expose their inner fascism, than we are having them sit around in rooms calmly plotting the murder of 25 million Americans, as was the case with the graduate students from the 1% who made up the Weather Underground.



Those people are evil

Here's an interesting variation on the game of "Spot the Idiot"....

Culture of Death Watch - Abortion and the Fiscally Conservatives Liberal.

As Justice Ginsburg candidly acknowledged to the New York Times, one of justifications of America's liberal abortion policy is that it gets rid of "populations that we don't want too many of." (Full quote: "Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of.")

Obviously, liberals can talk their eugenics talk among themselves, but that kind of candor is usually not shared with the unwashed masses, who might get confused about their betters' desire to liquidate their populations.

That's why when you hear this kind of thing, there is a moment of shocking clarity about abortion as social policy: Abortionist Claims He Saves Taxpayers Money by Ridding the World of ‘Ugly Black Babies’:

Charlotte, North Carolina – Pro-lifers were recently told by a Charlotte abortionist that he saves taxpayers money by ridding the world of “ugly black babies.”

Members of the group Operation Save America went to the home of Ashutosh “Ron” Virmani, abortionist at A Preferred Women’s Health Center, on July 26th to speak to him about their concerns regarding his practice. The encounter was captured on camera as two men and one woman spoke with Virmani.

“Don’t put pregnancy and adoption on the taxpayers,” Virmani stated. “I don’t wish to pay for the baby with my money.”

The woman then asked, “You would rather profit off of those children?”

Virmani replied, “No, no, no, I am not profiting. I, as a taxpayer, do not wish to pay for those babies to be born and brought up and kill those people in Colorado.” The abortionist was referring to the recent massacre in Aurora, Colorado, allegedly committed by James Holmes.

“Go ahead and pay for them,” he exclaimed angrily. “Let me see you adopt one of those ugly black babies!”

“If you tell us, we’ll adopt them. … Give us a chance to adopt them,” one of the men replied as Virmani closed the door.

The video has now gone viral, generating over 136 thousand views and counting. Those who have watched the footage state that they are horrified.

Here's the video.

Larry Doyle and the Game of "Spot the Idiot."

I agree with this column by Harold Ficket in the Catholic Exchange, which argues that Catholics shouldn't ask Larry Doyle to apologize, rather they should thank Doyle for his honesty and hold his honest opinion up for all to see:

Should we be shocked and appalled by this? Hardly, it only means that today’s Catholics are getting back to being authentic Christians in an increasingly pagan society. “Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of Me. Rejoice and be glad,” says the Lord (Matt 5:11-12a). Jesus does not say, Kindly ask them to mind their manners and treat the faith as too precious for open discussion.

In a subsequent posting Doyle mocked the pro forma apology being required of him, and frankly, I don’t blame him. He said what he said because he hates Catholicism for standing in the way of a secular agenda. I’d much rather have frank and honest hatred exposed for what is it than Orwellian expressions of “respect” for religion that are really just a smoke screen for the tyrannical imposition of secular values.

When we ask for apologies from such people, we are asking that faith enjoy a privileged status where it’s largely treated as out-of-bounds for frank criticism, and therefore, in fact, irrelevant to public issues.

If we want to reintroduce the Christian vocabulary into the conversation, then we are going to have to let criticisms, even vicious attacks, flow freely. Do I really need to point out that Doyle’s commentary–and anything else like it–does more to expose the vile nature of anti-Catholic prejudice and its prevalence in our society than anything Bill Donohue and The Catholic League could possible do? (For the record, I admire Donohue and The Catholic League’s work tremendously.)

It’s time to grow up and mix it up, rhetorically. The best satire–much better than Doyle’s, in fact–has always come out of Christianity, because satire as a form depends on a consistent moral viewpoint. See Jonathan Swift and the wonderful work in the last decades of the twentieth century of Walker Percy. The first a devout Anglican priest and the latter a devout Catholic.

Larry, you are wrong, and if you’d like to talk about it, we’re ready. That’s all that needs saying. Put away the calls for apologies and group pressure tactics in favor of censorship. As Catholics we are here, we are relevant, and we are totally unafraid of debate or crude and self-refuting jokes.

Exactly.

Doyle looked like an asshat with his claim that it was okay for a liberal secularist to indulge in a bigoted screed in order to parody things that no one other than a liberal, secularist bigot had said.

The irony of that bit of circular reasoning speaks volumes about the intellectual poverty of the world in which Doyle lives.

What also speaks volumes is the silence on the Left that has followed Doyle's bigoted anti-Catholic screed.

Playing "Spot the Idiots" has never been easier.

From the "Great Life Decisions" File...

..."naked bondage sex game" mistaken for kidnapping:

They wanted bondage, and they wound up in handcuffs.

A Portland, Ore., couple was arrested on Valentine's Day after cops mistook a bound and naked woman in the back of a car for a crime in progress, The Los Angeles Times reported.

Nikolas Harbar, 31, was only "role-playing" when he allegedly tied up his naked girlfriend, 26-year-old Stephanie Pelzner and threw her in the back of his Subaru in the early afternoon, according to a police report. But the ball-and-chain action went awry when cops got a call from a concerned witness.

"Officers continued to check the area, concerned for the welfare of the bound and naked female," the report reads. "The vehicle was spotted ... an officer made contact with a male walking away from the car and noticed a bound and naked female in the back of the car."

Harbar told cops that the two "were just having some fun," and Pelzner confirmed that "she was voluntarily bound a nude." But officers weren't so quick to laugh it off -- After all, they had already sent at least nine patrol cars to look for the sex fiends, Fox News reported.

"The concern is their actions created a pretty substantial public alarm, to the point where you have a 911 caller saying she's concerned about this person tied up naked in the back of a car," Lt. Robert King, bureau spokesman, told the Los Angeles Times. "Why would the officers think it was a Valentine's Day thing ... it creates a lot of concern from the public."

Harbar and Pelzner were arrested and charged with disorderly conduct, but released later that day.

What morons.

Good for the witnesses who got involved and didn't say, "Hey, maybe it's just a pair of morons engaged in "naked bondage sex games."

From the "Truth is Stranger than Fiction...

...because Fiction has to be Plausible" Department.

Lawsuit: Defendant Breached a Duty Not to Shoot Bottle Rockets Out of His Anus.

College frat guys, naturally.

The pertinent allegations are:

8. [Defendant] was highly intoxicated on this date and time, and decided in his drunken stupor that it would be a good idea to shoot bottle rockets out of his anus on the [Alpha Tau Omega fraternity] deck, located on the back of the ATO house.

10. [Defendant] placed a bottle rocket in his anus [and] ignited the fuse, but instead of launching, the bottle rocket blew up in Defendant's rectum, and this startled plaintiff and caused him to jump back, at which time he fell off of the ATO deck, and he became lodged between the deck and an air conditioner unit adjacent to the deck.

13. Per the applicable codes ... the deck in question should have had a railing, which comported with said codes.

16. ATO owed plaintiff a duty to provide a safe deck, including a railing, and ... a duty to supervise its guests and its own fraternity members, such as Defendant, and other under age persons, from consuming alcohol on its premises, which leads to stupid and dangerous activities, such as shooting bottle rockets out of one's own anus.

18. [Defendant] also owed plaintiff ... a duty of care not to drink under age, or to file bottle rockets out of his anus.

19. [Defendant] breached this duty when he both drank under age ... and attempted to fire a bottle rocket out of his anus while under the influence. The act of firing a bottle rocket, within Huntington City Limits, was also a crime.

22. Plaintiff asserts that the activity of underaged drinking and firing bottle rockets out of one's own anus constitutes an "ultra-hazardous" activity which exposes both of these defendant to strict liability

Here is the pdf of the complaint if you need to put it into your form file.

Mom and Dad must be so proud.

Don't you hate it when this happens?

California Man Stuck in Baby Swing for 9 Hours After Bet Goes Wrong

A California man became stuck in a baby swing for about nine hours after a wager went horribly wrong, police said.

After making a $100 bet with friends, the 21 year old lubricated himself with laundry detergent and squeezed into the swing, the Times-Herald reported.

But the man became stuck, and his friends decided to leave him swinging in Blue Rock Springs Park overnight.

He was discovered when a groundskeeper heard screaming around 6:00 a.m. local time Saturday.

Firefighters freed the man by cutting the swing's chains. He was taken to a local hospital, where the baby seat was removed with a cast cutter.

The man sustained non-life-threatening injuries.

Well, at least he won the bet.

Spot the Idiot.

Matt Taibbi and other alleged journalists worked with the "Occupy movement" to gin up the message they wanted to report.

Note to media: it’s the ethics, not the ideology!


Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi, also exposed as one of the alleged journalists working with the Occupy movement behind the scenes and undisclosed, offers up a weak defense of the inherent lack of ethics of those involved. Let’s square the circle and call it weak tea.

There is nothing terribly interesting in any of these exchanges. Most all of the things written were things all of us ended up saying publicly in our various media forums.

It likely fell to a mostly politically irrelevant Taibbi and Rolling Stone to lead the push back as a distraction from NBC’s big problem, Dylan Ratigan. The pigeon-coiffed man with the big mouth has some explaining to do, including to NBC suits and anchor, Brian Williams.

In Taibbi's case, playing "spot the idiot" is particularly easy.

Get a job, you damn Hippie...

...and the way you smile when you talk about "class war" while wearing your East German military uniform is downright creepy.

Not that the left is violent or anything.

Another video.

The Left - A Treasury of Unintentional Humor...

...because when you think about these idiots running the country, you can either laugh or cry.

This guy wants you to pay for his college education because, well, he wants you to, but he doesn't think that he should pay for your car.



Other videos here.

Get a job, you damn hippie...

...and, no, you can't poop on that police car.

The Daily Mail has photos of the insane behavior of the leftists at the OWS demonstration and of the squalid filth they left behind.

It shouldn't bear noting, but I will, that if the Tea Party had done anything a fraction as aberrant, it would have been front page news for months.

Which only goes to show that conservatives have been taught to be on their best behavior;  a lesson that the left has never been taught, which makes playing "spot the idiots" that much more rewarding.

Spot the Idiot.

Some flyspeck named Jim Naylor at some online site called Splice seems to believe that if he thinks you ought to condemn Norwegian terrorists in the form that he thinks is proper, then you have failed his test for not being complicit with the terrorist:

Where's the Condemnation?

Jim Naylor

The eerie official silence in the wake of the Norway massacre.

In the event you have no opinions on Anders Breivik, you’re a moron. This is why I’m surprised that I haven’t seen or heard from Christianity's leaders on the matter. I’ve gone from the Vatican to the Saddleback Ministries, and then some, and I’ve got to say I’ve been getting nothing back in response from all but one (and to add an insult, that one made a precursory statement of no comment). The only thing I could gather from my attempted correspondence with Christian leadership is that Rick Warren doesn’t want to say anything unless he and his people know my angle. It’s like they’re all too afraid of their own shady scriptures to condemn them, or perhaps they condone it and they just don’t want the non-Christian parts of the world to know their true colors. Why are a majority of Christians silent and unable to publicly condemn (or at least disown) a fundamentalist Christian that committed an act of terror?

I mentioned the Vatican already, but their silence has reminded me of their semi-silent acceptances of larger, more organized, mass killings. The lack of response from the Vatican shows the world just how Ratzinger feels about Breivik. I may as well lump the Vatican in with Westboro Baptist Church. At this point, only the WBC has anything to say about it; nothing nice, but at least they have the balls to come out and say what they really think instead of being silent to avoid lying. Pat Roberts and his ministry: nothing. Trinity United, ditto. I thought maybe Rick Warren would offer an opinion. After all, around 2006, he was saying that Fundamentalism in religion would be a danger to society. Why not hold Warren to his words, call him on BS, and see if he’s willing to lead by example? Instead I got a reply via email stating that neither he nor his ministry has made, or is willing to make a statement. But the next day via Twitter he asks people to pray away the pain. I guess a deleted tweet says more about what Warren really finds important at times like these. Perhaps my focus should be on Rick Warren; after all he probably doesn’t want to believe Anders Breivik is a Christian.

It's not apparent that Breivik is a Christian from any perspective other than that he may have said he was.  From the standpoint of living a life according to the tenets of Christian doctrine, he ain't. 

Unlike Islam, there is no text in Christianity's Holy Book imposing a duty on Christians to kill unbelievers.  The text is noteworthy for counseling loving one's neighbors.  Breivik didn't love his neighbors; he killed his neighbors because he was a psycho.  Ergo he was not a Christian. QED.

Does this flyspeck named Jim Naylor really believe that Pope Benedict - or any of the pastors he identifies - endorses the murder of children?  If he does, he needs psychotherapy, not a reasoned response.
In fact, of course, to be expected, Pope Benedict did condemn the acts of Breivik -

Pope Benedict XVI has called on people to renounce hatred in the face of the “deep sorrow” felt over the terror attacks in Norway.


The pope urged people to pray for the dead, the wounded and their loved ones as he spoke to pilgrims and tourists from the balcony of his summer palace in Castel Gandolfo near Rome.

Benedict says he is issuing a heartfelt appeal for people to “abandon hatred once and for all” and renounce what he calls “the logic of evil”.

The pope yesterday sent a condolence message to Norway’s king, denouncing the “senseless violence”.

His envoy in Norway called the terror attacks “madness” and said the victims would be remembered at Sunday Mass.

"Unfortunately, yet again comes news of death and violence,'' Benedict said at the start of his greetings to the faithful.

"We all feel deep sorrow for the grave terrorist acts.''

“I want to again repeat my grief-stricken appeal to all to abandon forever the way of hatred and to run away from the logic of evil,” Benedict said in his remarks, speaking in Italian.

Apparently, "grave terrorist acts" is not clear enough for Naylor and his intellectual pygmies at Splice.

By the way, has Splice or Naylor condemned any of the dozens of Muslim attacks on Christians that were committed during the last year?  If not, by his logic, he apparently is complicit in those attacks.

More Liberal Fascism.

Jonah Goldberg points the spotlight on this Canadian commentary calling for control on the media by "multicultural commissions with the power to punish and shame."

Jeepers - what does that sound like?

Oh, I don't know...Nazi Germany and Communist Russia, perhaps.

On "gay bullying" and that thing called "projection."

Kathy Shaidle catches an interesting insight into homosexual ethicist Dan Savage's recent public pronouncement on Michelle Bachman, or, more specifically, Michelle Bachman's husband, from Slate Magazine:

This week, though, the [Dan Savage] podcast started with an attack on Marcus Bachmann’s masculinity. After a short preamble about the accuracy of gaydar (with a scientific citation, no less), Savage—whom I respect tremendously—played a tape of Michelle’s husband’s speaking voice. Bachmann has a tiny bit of a lisp—though it’s barely perceptible—and he slurs his words slightly. To Savage’s ears, it was a gay accent. Savage played the tape over and over, and reprised it several times throughout the podcast. He even did his own Bachmann impression, exaggerating the lisp and camping it up.

In other words, the man who launched the “It Gets Better Project,” an effort to stop the bullying of gay teens, was acting like a big bully.

As Savage always notes, the kind of smear-the-queer taunts that can cause so much pain to young people aren’t aimed only at kids who are gay, they’re often aimed at boys who don’t live up to some mythical standard of masculinity and girls who just aren’t girly enough.

I can only imagine how listeners who happen to have the kind of lisping, effeminate speech and affect that Savage was ridiculing felt upon hearing the attack.

Mark Shea adds this insight about Dan Savage's recent "joke" about raping a male conservative politician:

Don't believe it? Here is Savage, fresh from bullying Bachmann's husband about his lisp, fantasizing about inflicting rape (pardon me: "hate sex" which is totally different) on his political enemies to the applause of the sort of apes who populate the audience of "Real Time".


This is a militant crusading intolerant and deeply hypocritical faith that does not hesitate for a second to deploy against its perceived enemies everything it pretends to decry. Hate sex Rape is openly bruited and applauded. The most miserable schoolyard bullying is just part of the toolkit for these phony apostles of compassion. These guys are going to wear out their welcome damn fast once they use the force of law to try to hammer people into Goodthink. You can't beat people into loving your perversion.

Of course, Maher's audience laughed at the idea of raping someone they hated for having the wrong opinions.

I've been reading Timothy Snyder recite in his excellent book on the tragic situation of people living between Stalin and Hitler, Bloodlands, stories about how Nazis einsatzgruppen in Nazi-occupied Ukraine would drink and laugh and make Jewish women recite "I am a Jew and I don't deserve to live" before forcing them to strip and shooting them in the back of the head and tossing their bodies into a pit that their husbands and brothers had been forced to dig the day before with the taunts that they should dig carefully because their wives and mothers and sisters would be filling up the pit the next day. 

You read those stories and you wonder how any human being could possibly be that way.

There's more than a little bit of that old fashioned Nazi spirit in Maher's audience.

This is really going to screw up the "Good v. Evil Dynamic."

KKK protests Westboro Church.

Free Speech lives among our educated elites...

... as long as we understand that "free speech" means "speech other than that which we don't like."

Here is an amusing video of conservative students taking a petition around campus to ban Rush Limbaugh and Glen Beck from the radio. What's particularly revealing is how the student gets signers to affirm that they believe in "free speech."

What give this video added poignancy is that it was filmed at Fresno State.