Shortell's Case Not About Academic Freedom

From the NY Sun:

A Brooklyn College professor who described religious people as "moral retards" said he is dropping his bid to become chairman of the department of sociology after the college's president expressed outrage over his views.

Timothy Shortell, an associate professor in the sociology department at the CUNY senior college, sent a bitter e-mail on Monday to several departmental heads saying he had decided to step down as chairman-elect and claiming he was a victim of a political attack.

Â…In his e-mail, Mr. Shortell expressed anger at the treatment he received from some members of his department and at what he called the administration's "inadequate" defense of his academic freedom.

"After witnessing the amount of venom directed at me by some members of the department during the last two weeks," he wrote, "I have come to doubt the possibility of any amicable solution."

As my father has been known to say, “You made that bed, now lie in it.”

Mr. Shortell engaged in a brutal, fact-challenged rant with little intellectual merit that vilified people of faith as uneducated fanatics and escapist liars that were incapable of moral action and prone to reveling in bigotry and violence. Interestingly enough, his essay was a perfect example of the kind of narrow-minded hatred and intolerance he ascribed to others.

Sadly, Professor Shortell seems to know as little about the limits of academic freedom as he does about the merits of religion.

The gold stand of academic freedom, the 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure, states:

A. Teachers are entitled to full freedom in research and in the publication of the results, subject to the adequate performance of their other academic duties; but research for pecuniary return should be based upon an understanding with the authorities of the institution.

B. Teachers are entitled to freedom in the classroom in discussing their subject, but they should be careful not to introduce into their teaching controversial matter which has no relation to their subject.
Limitations of academic freedom because of religious or other aims of the institution should be clearly stated in writing at the time of the appointment.

C. College and university teachers are citizens, members of a learned profession, and officers of an educational institution. When they speak or write as citizens, they should be free from institutional censorship or discipline, but their special position in the community imposes special obligations. As scholars and educational officers, they should remember that the public may judge their profession and their institution by their utterances. Hence they should at all times be accurate, should exercise appropriate restraint, should show respect for the opinions of others, and should make every effort to indicate that they are not speaking for the institution.

Let's look at these three principles as they apply to Professor Shortell's current situation.

A. Teachers are entitled to full freedom in research and in the publication of the results, subject to the adequate performance of their other academic duties; but research for pecuniary return should be based upon an understanding with the authorities of the institution.

Professor Shortell's essay was not the research and publication of academic findings, but a polemic. This principle clearly does not apply, as this essay was in no way an academic work.

B. Teachers are entitled to freedom in the classroom in discussing their subject, but they should be careful not to introduce into their teaching controversial matter which has no relation to their subject. Limitations of academic freedom because of religious or other aims of the institution should be clearly stated in writing at the time of the appointment.

Shortell's rant did not occur in a classroom setting, and was clearly a controversial essay targeting religion. Furthermore, depending upon the stated aims of CUNY Brooklyn College, Shortell quite possibly could have faced dismissal if he had introduced his essay in a classroom setting. This second principle of academic freedom emphatically does not apply to this case.

C. College and university teachers are citizens, members of a learned profession, and officers of an educational institution. When they speak or write as citizens, they should be free from institutional censorship or discipline, but their special position in the community imposes special obligations. As scholars and educational officers, they should remember that the public may judge their profession and their institution by their utterances. Hence they should at all times be accurate, should exercise appropriate restraint, should show respect for the opinions of others, and should make every effort to indicate that they are not speaking for the institution.

Shortell would be within bounds in writing an essay or even an academic work condemning religion if he followed these guidelines, but the essay he created was neither accurate, nor exercising appropriate restraint, nor showing respect for the opinions of others. It flies explicitly in the face of the kind of work that would be protected by academic freedom.

Shortell can whine about the “inadequate” defense of his academic freedom all he wants, but academic freedom does not apply to his version of a sociological Mein Kampf. Academic freedom cannot shield people from their own stupidity, an lesson Mr. Shortell is now learning.

Furthermore, from a legal perspective, academic freedom in not a guaranteed right, but merely a quasi-legal concept. It is not precisely defined nor well-justified by legal principles. In short, it is merely empty rhetoric.

Much like the vile anti-religious holdings-forth of one Timothy Shortell.

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Former ACLU Lawyer Reveals Their Hidden Agenda

"...The ACLU played a helpful role in the civil rights movement defending these people, and I can't turn my back on that. I have to give credit where credit is due."

"But....that being said, what they have done in the past is completely eviscerated by what they do in the present. The ACLU has become a fanatical anti-faith Taliban of American religious secularism."

Who said that? Mr. Reese Lloyd, former ACLU lawyer.

Read the rest of this fascinating and disturbing portrait of what the ACLU really hopes to accomplish at Stop The ACLU.

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Take Back The Memorial

I look at the pictures again in my mind, and I cannot find the words, not matter how long and hard I try. A walk outside is meant to help me clear my head, and the sticky Carolina June night embraces me like a steambath. Fireflies and stars fill an ink-dark sky. I am not accustomed to this. My fingers shake with a chill that comes from inside, and a cold fire smolders within.

The images will not stop.

Freeze-frames of bodies cartwheeling down from upon high--what were they thinking in those last terrifying seconds, when they made that terrible choice between burning and hurtling themselves into space? They knew. They knew their lives were over, that they had been robbed of all their tomorrows, of everything they could have been, or have ever wanted to be.

They would never hold their children again, delighting in the wonder in their faces Christmas morning. They would never grow old and gray beside the one they loved; they would never delight in watching their grandchildren be born, crawl, laugh, and learn to run.

I close my eyes and put my head in my hands, and see the second plane barrel in, full of disbelief once more, and I shudder as the towers buckle and fall again in my mind. Tears well up and I choke back a sob. It is a side I show to no one, full of anger at my own impotence, and a shame I can neither understand nor explain.

And the anger grows, and I seek to channel it, hoping I can convey the wrongness of it all to those who would defile the hallowed ground where so many perished that bright blue September morning.

I hear the call.

Burlingame. Myers. Willis. Jarvis. Johnson.

I cannot believe some Americans are so shallow and so spiteful that they would slander the dead on hallowed ground. I cannot find the words to express my shock, anger and dismay.

Perhaps you can.

I rarely ask anything of my readers, but this is one of those times. Go to Take Back the Memorial and take advantage of the contact information provided there to let those who would murder the memory of the 9/11 dead that you will not stand for this treason to their memories. Please write. Please call. Be polite, be firm, make your will known.

Please, don't let another tragedy happen at Ground Zero.

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Putting Kerry's Form 180 to Bed

According to the Boston Globe, John Kerry has finally authorized his military records to be released via a form 180:

On May 20, Kerry signed a document called Standard Form 180, authorizing the Navy to send an ''undeleted" copy of his ''complete military service record and medical record" to the Globe. Asked why he delayed signing the form for so long, Kerry said in a written response: ''The call for me to sign a 180 form came from the same partisan operatives who were lying about my record on a daily basis on the Web and in the right-wing media. Even though the media was discrediting them, they continued to lie. I felt strongly that we shouldn't kowtow to them and their attempts to drag their lies out."

Ignoring Kerry's rhetoric (as most Americans did in 2004), the important sentence in this story to me is not what was found by Globe reporter Michael Kranish (not much), but the interesting use of ellipses in the first sentence of the preceding paragraph:

On May 20, Kerry signed a document called Standard Form 180, authorizing the Navy to send an ''undeleted" copy of his ''complete military service record and medical record" to the Globe.

Why did Kranish feel a need to put "undeleted" and "complete military service record and medical record" in apostrophes? Was he unsure that he was getting a full and complete collection of documents as promised?

Kranish is sure to know that on the standard form 180 currently in use (h/t Blogs For Bush), Kerry would have had the option to release "undeleted" sections of his record for specific years or ranges of years, perhaps excluding years that may have contained information that may have raised troubling questions about Kerry's military service. At no point in the Globe article does Kranish mention specific dates of service (other than the December 2, 1968 Purple Heart incident) covered in the released documents, nor a date range, so this is impossible to verify.

To help clear this up, it would be very interesting to know if Globe reporter Kranish or any other staffer actually saw the form 180 submitted by Senator Kerry.

It would also be helpful if Kranish, who has been a bit too chummy with Kerry in the past for some people's comfort, would make a simple declaration that he did not find or withhold any information about Kerry's military record not already released to the public by the press.

Toward that end, I sent a simple email to the Globe ombudsman ( mbud@globe.com?subject=Boston%20Globe%20Services%20Contact">ombud@globe.com) asking him to please pass along the following two questions to Mr. Kranish:

1. Did you (Mr. Kranish) or any other member of the Boston Globe see
John Kerry's Form 180 before it was submitted to verify that he asked
for a full and UNDELETED Report of Separation for his ENTIRE service
record?

2. Did you (Mr. Kranish) or any other member of the Boston Globe
discover and/or withhold any new information from Senator Kerry's
military or medical records that were not previously released by John
Kerry or his staff regarding his military or medical service?

Quite frankly, I hope that Mr. Kranish can say for certain that he saw all of Senator Kerry's record, and that he found nothing substantial that the rest of us didn't already know.

I want to put this turkey to bed.

Note: Glenn Reynolds, Mickey Kaus, Blogs for Bush, Michelle Malkin and Just One Minute are just some of the bloggers that have more coverage.

Update: Fixed a bad word choice, putting "apostrophes" in to replace and improper use of "ellipses." My readers are too smart for me to get away with blogging before my morning coffee...

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Howard Dean: The Gift That Keeps on Giving

Ku Klux Klan Rally, Montiplier, Vermont, 1927

"It's pretty much a white Christian Party" *

Howard Dean
Vermont Governor 1991-2003
Democratic National Committee Chair

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Building Victory

Fallujah, Iraq – Critics of the attack on Fallujah last November often invoked the damning (and mythical) utterance from Vietnam: "We had to destroy the village to save it." Never mind that the alternative to the massive assault on the city backed by artillery, tanks, and aircraft would either be a huge loss of American lives or simply allowing the al-Qaeda cut-throat al-Zarqawi to keep it as the terrorist headquarters for all of Iraq. Forget that the city was already crumbling from the neglect of Saddam Hussein's regime. Today Fallujah is on the mend and then some, a symbol of renewal and American-Iraqi cooperation.

Â…Restoring and expanding access to electricity is top priority here, more so than access to running water because Iraqis pump water up from the mains to tanks on their roof. No electricity, no working pumps.
Williams and his counterpart at the Corp of Engineers, Maj. Daniel Hibner, don't have the simple goal of restoring pre-war Iraq. "The baseline is crappy so why go back to that?" says Williams. "We did do some damage but the repairs are taking these people far beyond where they were."

Â…"We're certainly not trying to turn this into the equivalent of an American city," says Williams. "But it will be first class for an Iraqi one and that's going to win the hearts and minds of the people." From the smiles, the thumbs up, the waves, and the cries of "Hello!" in Arabic I got from the children in even the worst parts of the city, I'd say they're being won.

Thanks to Glenn Reynolds we get to see a perspective of the Iraqi War that the news media seems all too willing to ignore, that of an Iraq literally rising from the ashes of Saddam's neglect and al-Zarqawi's hatred. Terror will lose in Iraq. It has no choice, for while al Qaeda can threaten and kill, it can offer no hope and build no future.

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More Koran Abuse Allegations

Dhimmiweek has just broken another story confirming Koran abuse by an American civilian contractor, now more than a year old.

Unlike the story of Guantanamo Bay guards that kicked or stepped upon the Koran, these allegations claim that this example of Koran abuse was far more severe, as the American contractor in this instance defiled the Koran with blood.

From OIC via Men's News Daily:

"...The OIC Spokesman urged the United States Government to live up to its responsibilities and not be lenient with the perpetrators of the desecration. He also demanded that those responsible for this despicable crime should be brought to justice immediately and that urgent measures should be taken to calm the tension in the Muslim world and ensure that such detestable acts are not repeated in the future."

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Blogrunner Steal Bandwidth

blogrunner steal bandwidth. Hulk Smash!

Courtesy of the Ebb & Flow Institute, we learn of a site called blogrunner, which steals blog posts and then reposts them in their entirity. The site above seems to be a NY Times-affiliated subsite of Blogrunner. Their main site is here.

Blogrunner even hotlinks images instead of hosting their own copies of these images, forcing the original blogger to pay for additional bandwidth even though visitors may never see his site.

While I'm not a lawyer, I suspect this may not pass the "snift test" for acceptable use. At the very least, it is a huge breach of blog netiquette.

Any legal eagles care to comment on this one?

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Hillary: Bush "Abusing Power."

From the NY Times via Matty D:

Senator Hillary Clinton castigated President Bush and Washington Republicans today as mad with power and bent on marginalizing Democrats during a speech to 1,000 supporters at her first major re-election fund-raiser, which netted about $250,000.

Mrs. Clinton, who is running for a second term in 2006 and is widely described as a possible Democratic nominee for the presidency in 2008, said that her party is hamstrung because Republicans dissemble and smear without shame and the news media has lost its investigatory zeal for exposing misdeeds.

Left unchallenged, especially if Democrats fail to pick up seats in next year's Congressional elections, she said, Republican leaders could ram through extremist conservative judges, wreck Social Security and make unacceptable concessions to China, Saudi Arabia and other nations that are needed to finance the United States budget deficit.

"There has never been an administration, I don't believe in our history, more intent upon consolidating and abusing power to further their own agenda," Mrs. Clinton told the audience at a "Women for Hillary" gathering in Midtown Manhattan this morning.

"I know it's frustrating for many of you; it's frustrating for me: Why can't the Democrats do more to stop them?" she continued to growing applause and cheers. "I can tell you this: It's very hard to stop people who have no shame about what they're doing. It is very hard to tell people that they are making decisions that will undermine our checks and balances and constitutional system of government who don't care. It is very hard to stop people who have never been acquainted with the truth."

Mrs. Clinton described Republican leaders as messianic in their beliefs, willing to manipulate facts and even "destroy" the Senate to gain political advantage over the Democratic minority. She also labeled the House of Representatives as "a dictatorship of the Republican leadership," where individual members are all but required to vote in lock-step with the majority's agenda.

Referring to Congress' Republican leadership, she said, "Some honestly believe they are motivated by the truth, they are motivated by a higher calling, they are motivated by, I guess, a direct line to the heavens."

Now Hillary, aren't you giving George and Company just a little bit too much credit?

After all, Howard Dean, Harry what's-his-name (from Searchlight NV, yes we know, we know...) and others have done far more to marginalize the Democratic Party than has Mr. Bush or Dark Sith Lord Rove.

Once could even say you're adding to the Demo-hysteria with the little ditty you uttered above.

As for:

"I can tell you this: It's very hard to stop people who have no shame about what they're doing. It is very hard to tell people that they are making decisions that will undermine our checks and balances and constitutional system of government who don't care. It is very hard to stop people who have never been acquainted with the truth."

...Didn't that describe the last time you got near the White House?

Of course, the difference is this, Hill: This time, we aren't buying it.

Not by a long shot.

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D-Day Plus 61 Years

Order of the Day
June 6, 1944

"Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Forces: You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave Allies and brothers-in-arms on other Fronts you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world.

"Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well trained, well equipped and battle-hardened. He will fight savagely.

"But this is the year 1944! Much has happened since the Nazi triumphs of 1940-41. The United Nations have inflicted upon the Germans great defeats, in open battle, man-to-man. Our air offensive has seriously reduced their strength in the air and their capacity to wage war on the ground. Our Home Fronts have given us an overwhelming superiority in weapons and munitions of war, and placed at our disposal great reserves of trained fighting men. The tide has turned! The free men of the world are marching together to Victory!

"I have full confidence in your courage, devotion to duty and skill in battle. We will accept nothing less than full victory!

"Good Luck! And let us all beseech the blessing of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking."

Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower
Supreme Allied Commander
Allied Expeditionary Force

61 years ago today, 156,000 allied troops from the United States, Grean Britain, Canada, Australia, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, France, Greece, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway and Poland invaded Hitler's "Fortess Europe."

Approximately 10,000 allied soldiers became casualties on D-Day, with 2,500 killed. Between 4,000-9,000 Germans soldiers also became casualties on D-Day.

All told, the Battle of Normandy which began June 6, 1944 led to over 425,000 Allied and German troops killed, wounded, or missing.

Less than one year later, VE-Day--Victory In Europe-- was declared on May 9, 1945.

Please take a moment to remember the brave soldiers, sailors, airmen and civilians on both sides that partipated in the liberation of Europe.

Links:
National D-Day Memorial (US)
D-Day Museum (UK)
National D-Day Museum Foundation (US)
American Experience| D-Day (US)
D-Day, Normandy, and Beyond
Normandy, 1944
Operation Overlord: The Invasion of Fortress Europe

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Shocking Koran Update

It's JUST A FREAKING BOOK.

Isn't a little perspective refreshing?

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Muslims Flush, Urinate On Koran at Gitmo

Detainees at Guantanamo Bay Cuba urinated on Korans and attempted to flush them down toilets.

Somehow, I doubt that will get much attention in the mainstream media, since they're only harmless terrorists committing these desecrations, not evil U.S. soldiers.

Michael Isikoff, where are you?

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Shortell Proves His Ignorance With Eloquence

I once told a friend of mine that the only difference between the average person and one with a PhD is that the PhD may have the ability to express his stupidity more eloquently. Brooklyn College's Professor Timothy Shortell seems intent on proving the point.

Shortell is deep in controversy over online comments he made in an essay called “Religion & Morality: A Contradiction Explained”. The basic premise of Shortell's essay is that religion is irrational, inherently violent, creates immorality, and that the human condition will only improve with the eventual shunning of religion in favor of pleasure-seeking rationalism.

Shortell has just won an election to become the department chair of the Brooklyn College sociology department, but has not yet been confirmed to the position. Students began protesting Shortell's election as department chair once his essay became public, and now his chairman ship seems in doubt.

According to Fox News:

The school president must still approve the vote and has convened a committee to examine Shortell's qualifications. Members of the board of trustees at the publicly funded school are anxious to see the committee's report.

Jeffrey Wiesenfeld, who is a member of the board of trustees, said, "He hasn't done anything within the classroom, at least as far we know and as yet that would amount to what might be called ... an impeachable offense."

Mr. Weisenfeld is correct.

The topic of the essay, while very controversial and confrontational, should not disqualify Professor Shortell from his duly elected chairmanship. Intellectual freedom to discuss controversial topics must be protected if higher education is to develop and encourage a new generation of thinkers.

The excretable quality of his essay, rife with contradictions in logic, unsupported accusations, and often unintentional comedy, is another matter entirely. If this essay's quality of writing is indicative of Shortell's academic prowess, I can only hope that the Brooklyn College facilities maintenance department has tenure-track positions.

Shortell's essay begins:

French Sociologist Émile Durkheim observed that religion was the root of science. Religion, he said, was the first human attempt to systematically explain the world. Durkheim thought that religious rationality would wither away in modern times (for him, the early twentieth century) because scientific rationality would replace it, by virtue of its superior explanatory power. Alas, he seems to have gotten this one wrong.

But Durkheim was right about the genealogy of thought. Modern religion is an elaboration of a belief in magic. In the absence of a scientific explanation of events and institutions, faith in magical powers, fetishization of nature, and overinterpretation of random variation are inevitable. Durkheim expected religion to fall out of fashion as the outright belief in magic had, for the same reason. For anyone with the least education, the superior power of scientific thinking is obvious. Only a willful ignorance could lead to any other conclusion.

Scientific thinking is indeed superior for many purposes, but it is smug arrogance to proclaim that a scientific approach is applicable to all situations. Someone should remind Shortell that Durkheim's revered scientific rationality was insufficient to deal with the emotional loss of his son in World War I. Durkheim withdrew within himself and could not even bear to have his son's name mentioned in his presence, a patently emotional, decidedly non-scientific response.

Professor Shortell further evangelizes:

Religions have persisted, despite their inability to explain the modern world. Here, in fact, we have a stunning reversal: religions play up the "essential mystery" of modern life. Since the world is too complex to understand all at once, in its entirety—even for the scientist—all of us will sometimes shake our heads in wonder at the turn of events in which we find ourselves. Many will find this uncertainty anxiety-provoking, and will look around for a convenient escape.

Once could presumably reverse the argument and also make the valid point that science still exists despite its inability to explain the modern world.

Despite research going back well past the time of Archimedes, mathematicians still cannot fully compute pi, the mathematical constant that is the ratio of the circumference to the diameter of a circle. Should we not believe in mathematics or circles until pi is proven?

As social organizations, religions have a dramatic power that hides their essential irrationality. They persist today because they are so effective at constructing group identities and at setting up conflict between the in- and out-groups. For all religions, there is an "us" and a "them." All the ritual and the fellowship associated with religious practice is just a means of continually emphasizing group boundaries and hostility. It is no accident that the history of world religions is a history of violence, hatred and intolerance. The in-group has exclusive access to the truth, so the out-group need not—indeed, should not—be listened to; they can only deceive. And, being liars, and thus, evil, they forfeit their rights as equal members of the community. This is the poisonous logic of religious irrationality.

All modern religions are ideological: they insist on a total, though contradictory, system of beliefs and evaluations. Complete acceptance is the only way to escape the uncertainty of modernity. For this reason, religion without fanaticism is impossible. Anyone whose mind is trapped inside such a mental prison will be susceptible to extreme forms of behavior. All religions foment their own kind of holy war.

Shortell selectively targets religions as having a history of violence and intolerance, while ignoring that the greatest mass murderers of the past century were secularists. Stalin and Mao shared the good professor's dislike of religion, and Shortell seems unable to reconcile his cherry picking of the historical record with actual reality, and so proselytizes onward once more.

The reader might point out that some believers are more bland and mild than fire and brimstone. Those whose devotion is moderate are, perhaps, only cowardly fanatics. They want the fellowship and the security but ignore the logic of the system to which they grudgingly adhere. They may be more numerous than the overt fanatics, but they will always have less influence. This is simply the operation of the rule of the lowest common denominator; in response to uncertainty, the exaggerated sense of confidence of the zealot will win over the crowd. If you doubt that this is true, consider modern politics. The same dynamic applies. This is why our political system has given birth to the "war on drugs" and "family values."

Shortell preaches that anyone faithful to the tenets of their faith—no matter which faith—is a fanatic, while those who are less adamant in their religion are cowardly fanatics. Once again, Shortell shows a cultish divisiveness of his own, insisting that you must believe fully as he does or face being labeled an infidel.

One might also be amused to note that Shortell seems to be counting on his own zealotry to “win over the crowd” that he rails against.

Faith is by definition not rational—that is, it is belief in the absence of verification. (If you do not think this is a fair definition of faith, look it up. I got this from the Merriam-Webster online dictionary, item 2b.)

Perhaps not surprisingly considering his track record thus far, Shortell "accurately misquotes" Merriam-Webster's item 2b, which defines faith as a “firm belief in something for which there is no proof .”

I find it every much as interesting that he chose that particular definition, as faith is also defined as an allegiance to duty or to a person, and also as loyalty, fidelity, and a sincerity of intentions.

Shortell seems against loyalty and suspicious of fidelity, and it isn't hard to see this in disturbing detail. In addition to the text of this essay, Shortell also includes a collection of original artwork he created.

In the majority of these pictures, we see the same solitary, dark, limbless human silhouette about to be crushed by elements of his environment.

In one image the figure is in the path of giant dominoes about to fall; in another, it sits helplessly in front of boulders careening down a hillside. Yet a third shows the torso about to be overrun by an oncoming pair of headlights. Shortell seems obsessed with stark loneliness, feelings of abandonment, helplessness, and impending death.

To put it mildly, he's got "issues.”

If every assertion were subject to question, the faithful would have to admit that they hold their beliefs without rational basis. If the public sphere were to promote the free contest of ideas, religious belief would wither under the scrutiny of scientific rationality, just as Durkheim expected. As with nationalism, faith is secured by appeals to emotion, not critical thinking. Emotion in crowds tends toward panic or violence.

While I'm sure the good professor finds it infuriating, the marketplace of ideas has been around for quite sometime, and scientific rationality seems to have done religion no harm. Faith isn't based on science, or pseudo-science, but upon a core human desire for something greater than this plane of existence, which is found in the vast majority of cultures in human history.

Shortell seems hell-bent on stripping us of humanity in a mad pursuit of cold objectivity. Perhaps he has spent a bit too much time imagining life as a Vulcan.

His comments about the tendency of crowds may or may not have a degree of merit, but I would think that if his theory is correct, then there should be bloodbaths during every NASCAR race, Broadway show, and PTA meeting. I remain unconvinced.

In order to be protected from the harsh light of rational argument, the faithful want to make religion a taboo subject. Orthodoxy is supposed to be beyond question. Just like in totalitarian states, where criticism of the government is a capital offense, the faithful would like to enforce an intellectual gag-order so that the barbarity of their regime goes unchallenged.

Professor Shortell does not desire a rational discourse. He dismisses the merits of religion out of hand. Nobody has censored him nor put him in prison for his views, but neither has he the courage to stand up for his accusations. He claims, "we should be able to debate the issue in the public sphere without fear of retribution," but refuses to debate. He hits and runs, making me suspect he does not desire the rational argument he claims, but instead simply wishes to stand alone on his soap box inside an echo chamber.

This only addresses roughly the first half of Shortell's essay, and the rest is as agonizingly tiresome. He bloviates on, making one unsubstantiated statement after another. Feel free to read the rest, but you won' t miss much other than more projections of Shortell's apparent insensitivity and insecurity.

His thesis is simply this, “Can there be any doubt that humanity would be better off without religion?”

I think we can answer quite honestly that, "Yes sir, after thousands of years finding comfort in religion in every corner of this world, and on others, there is obviously quite a bit of doubt."

Religions are well established worldwide, and the bulk of humanity seems to think we are better off with them as an intrinsic part of our collective social fabric. What is not so readily apparent is the value of Professor Shortell's relatively new cult of scientific rationality.

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Crazy Cooter Comin' At Ya

I just happened to catch a CBS Evening News correspondent tonight (I released him unharmed hours later) and he revealed that many of the new suicide bombers in Iraq are far from being jihadis; they are simply unwitting citizens with car car woes.

Apparently a new insurgent tactic is to wait at car repair shops, and plant bombs in vehicles when civilians bring them in to get fixed.

Insurgents waiting for a victim...
here comes a good candidate.

By the time the customer comes back to pick up his car, it is not only fixed, it has "a little something special" under the hood. Customers drive away happy, only get a little more bang for their buck than they bargained for.

Coalition forces have released this picture of the suspected terrorist master bombmaker:

Master bomb-builder
Abdul "Cooter" al-Hassan

A suitable reward is being offered for Adbul "Cooter" al-Hassan's capture; 10,000 dinar and a date with Saudi Arabian "Am I Hot or Not?" Woman of the Year, Thamira Sittuna.

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Amnesty Confrontational

One-time human rights organization Amnesty International is having a tough week.

A scathing attack on the U.S. administration's handling of enemy detainees in the War on Terror compared the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba to Stalin's “gulag” system of prison work camps. Amnesty International further strained their credibility by calling Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld and other top administration officials "architects of torture," and suggested that other countries could file war-crime charges against the top officials and arrest them.

This kind of political grandstanding is expected from rouge regimes like North Korea or even the worst kind of partisan domestic politics, but it hardly befits an international human rights organization.

At the time these stories broke, I said that it was sad to see an organization such as AI lose so much of their credibility virtually overnight. I truly believe that. Generations of people have worked very hard for Amnesty International, trying with true sincerity to help the oppressed people of the world by placing a blinding public spotlight on the tyrannical regimes of the world.

Instead, because of what were quite frankly stupid comments by AI officers, the spotlight is now on Amnesty International, and the jagged cracks in its claimed impartiality have been exposed.

Publius Pundit has done a quantitative analysis showing that Amnesty specifically targets the United States for ridicule, releasing almost as much copy claiming U.S. human rights abuses as for all other nations combined.

Saudi Arabia, whose religious police forced girls to burn to death because of a sadistic adherence to radical Islam, deserves less scrutiny from AI than the United States?

Extending unwarranted rights is more deserving of Amnesty's limited resources than the ongoing genocide of tens of thousands of African Christians and Muslims by racist Arab militias in Darfur?

Unsubstantiated, often contradictory reports from imprisoned terrorists carry more weight with Amnesty than the anguished wails of those women and children, sons and daughters killed by al Qaeda bombs and bullets?

Amnesty International has no shame.... and it gets worse.

Amnesty claims:

AI is independent of any government, political ideology, economic interest or religion. It does not support or oppose any government or political system, nor does it support or oppose the views of the victims whose rights it seeks to protect.

If Amnesty truly "does not support or oppose any government or political system" as they claim, then its leader would not have contributed the maximum amount possible to John Kerry's presidential campaign.

Amnesty International seems to have decided to forego being a human rights organization and instead seems focused upon becoming another empty vessel for leftist propaganda.

The world is a sorrier place for the ideological betrayal of their leaders.

Note: Rusty shows the dunces at AI what a real gulag looks like.

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Felt Sponges

“Grandpa, I Love You To Death... But I've Gots Bills To Pay”

Was anyone else more than slightly creeped out by the Felt family's enthusiasm to cash in on their doddering 91-year-old grandfather's mysterious legacy as Deep Throat before he dies?

...Felt's daughter Joan, who persuaded her 91-year-old father to go public as "Deep Throat," lamented that the Post's Bob Woodward would get all the credit -- and profit--if Felt went to the grave with his secret.

"We could make at least enough money to pay some bills like the debt I've run up for the kids' education," she told Felt, according to the article. "Let's do it for the family."

Yes, you have to love a family that pimps out their pre-mortem grandpa.They might as well be humming some of Stephen Lynch's Grandfather

A stroke would be nice
Disease would be cool
I'll scatter his ashes
In my new swimming pool
I'll party with Hef
I'll dine with the Queen
So what say we unplug that machine?

Oh Grandfather, die
Before the fiscal year
Oh Grandfather, I
Wish Kevorkian were here
Oh Grandfather, die
Just take your final bow
Oh Grandfather, die
Family hates you anyhow...

Such behavior should be hardly surprising. Felt simply taught his kids to take the advice he gave to Bob Woodward as Deep Throat.

"Follow the money".

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Footnotes

An excerpt of John Dean's comments regarding W. Mark Felt, who has recently come forward as the famed informant known for 33 years only as “Deep Throat.”

“I never thought he was in the loop to have the information," John Dean, counsel in Nixon's White House and the government's top informant in the Watergate investigation, told The Associated Press. "How in the world could Felt have done it alone?"

Dean said he couldn't see how Felt, then in charge of the FBI's day-to-day operations, could have had time to rendezvous with reporters in parking garages and leave clandestine messages to arrange meetings. Perhaps FBI agents helped him, Dean suggested.

I don't much care about whether Deep Throat was only W. Mark Felt, or a composite character Woodward and Bernstein made up of several sources. As I mentioned briefly in Ace's comments last night, a 33-year old story doesn't suddenly become newsworthy simply because a character's name changed. It would hardly matter if Lee Harvey Oswald's real name turned out to be Chippy the Wonder Squirrel; the historical record remains the same, only the footnotes change.

What really matters is that a free press (with help) was able to help rein in criminal behavior at the highest levels of American government. What matters is that in this nation, reporters don't have to fear a knock at the door in the middle of the night if they publish a story the government doesn't like. What matters is that Deep Throat, Woodward, and Bernstein were able to help depose a corrupt government using the truth, the law, and the press instead of a bloody coup. That is the legacy of Watergate.

All the rest is footnotes.

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The Illinois House passed a

The Illinois House passed a bill Tuesday banning the sale of violent or sexually explicit video games to minors. The bill passed with an overwhelming 106-6 vote in favor of the ban. The bill now goes to Governor Rod Blogojevich, who proposed the ban last year after hearing of a game called JFK Reloaded which allows players to play the role of Lee Harvey Oswald in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

The bill passed the Illinois Senate earlier this month.

Other states and municipalities have tried similar bills, but they have repeatedly been struck down on First Amendment grounds. Under the impending law, clerks that knowingly sell adult video games to minors face a $1,000 fine, but the bill leaves it to the stores to determine which games are too violent or too sexually explicit for minors.

The proposed law has almost no chance of standing up to federal scrutiny. Not only does it place an undue burden upon stores to determine which games contain inappropriate content; it also fails to provide a significantly narrow definition of what constitutes violent or sexually explicit behavior, placing an undue burden upon store owners to make that determination without sufficient guidelines.

Two thoughts came to mind as I read of this proposed bill:

• That there are some similar problems between this bill and the practical failure of the “Assault Weapons Ban” embedded in the 1994 Crime Control and Prevention Act ( more commonly known as the “Assault Weapons Ban”) that expired last year, and;

• Illinois lawmakers must have known that this bill would not pass federal scrutiny based upon similar laws previously defeated… so why did they pass a bill that will almost certainly be challenged and struck down by federal courts once it becomes a law?

The 1994 Assault Weapons Ban signed into law by President Bill Clinton banned some specific firearms, but also attempted to ban similar weapons by banning certain features they felt were common to assault weapons. A partial list of these features included flash-hiders, pistol grips, and bayonet lugs.

The ban, while legal, was a practical failure. Firearm manufacturers simply removed the offending features and were then able to sell the exact same firearm type with only minor cosmetic changes.

It is a battle between the specific and the vague. The AW Ban failed because it tried to limit firearm access using specific but vague criteria, and the Illinois ban follows a similar path.

In the former, the 1994 Crime Bill was an attempt to get the desired result while ignoring the basic engineering truth that these firearm operating systems were identical to those of sporting guns. The lawmakers knew they could not pass a law that was a direct assault on the Second Amendment, and attempted a work-around that failed.

In the latter case , Illinois is attempting to get a desired result by while ignoring a basic truth that free speech, even speech we don't like, cannot be unreasonably constricted without just cause. They only compound their problems by unfairly placing an undue burden upon stores to determine what constitutes inappropriate content in an attempt to bypass the First Amendment.

So why are Illinois lawmakers so enthusiastically supporting a law that is destined to fail?

I have no easy answers, but suspect that it is a combination of some lawmakers trying to seriously address what they feel is a serious problem in our society, and others that calculated an immediate political gain from supporting such legislation with little or no political downside.

In any event, it will be interesting to see what Illinois lawmakers decide to once the law is signed and then almost certainly struck down. Will they go back to the proverbial drawing board and try to draft a constitutionally sound proposal, or will they simply throw their hands up and say, “we tried.”

Their response to a torpedoed law will go a long way towards telling us just how serious they really are.

Note: The bill that passed the House seems to be different that the version of the bill I discussed here in December.

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Cheney's Estimation May Be Conservative

Vice President Dick Cheney made a prediction Monday night on CNN's "Larry King Live" (transcript) that the Iraqi insurgency will end before the Bush administration leaves office in 2009.

"I think we may well have some kind of presence there over a period of time," Cheney said. "The level of activity that we see today from a military standpoint, I think, will clearly decline. I think they're in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency."

Critics of the Bush administration have been quick to point out that attacks by the insurgency have not declined since the Iraqi elections, and that the numbers of attacks have actually increased. While technically accurate, this criticism misses the larger context that seems to bolster Cheney's that the insurgency is in its "last throes."

The number and type of insurgent attacks have changed substantially since the conventional war ended just three weeks after the U.S.-led invasion began.

Early insurgent attacks were typically ambush attacks by groups of Saddam loyalists against coalition combat troops. These attacks often consisted of coordinated rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) supported by small arms (RPD, RPK machine guns, AK-type rifles) fire from fixed ambush positions. Despite the initial element of surprise enjoyed by the insurgents, the superior weapons, training, and tactics used by coalition combat forces typically reversed the ambushes, turning the insurgent's fixed ambush positions into funeral pyres. Superior armor and close air support assets decimated the insurgents, leading to many instances of the entire attacking force being captured, wounded, or killed.

Because of their decidedly lopsided defeats in early engagements against frontline coalition combat units, insurgents quickly changed their targets to "soft" targets, such as resupply convoys. While the insurgents were able to inflict more damage in their assaults on these more lightly armed and armored vehicles, the rapid response capability of coalition air and ground combat units once again led to high casualty rates among the insurgents during these attacks. (Note: These early insurgent attacks led to the widespread armoring and up-gunning of supply convoys).

In response to better coalition defense against these fixed-position attacks from both combat and combat support forces, insurgents once again tried to shift tactics, foregoing their near-suicidal fixed position engagements in favor of quick hit-and-run attacks that they hoped would increase their survivability, while also relying more heavily on the use of mines and IEDs.

Rapid response convoy escort units and UAV surveillance soon proved that insurgents fleeing the scene of ambushes in vehicles were just as vulnerable to coalition counterstrikes as they were in previous attacks from fixed positions. As the coalition forces became more and more adept at countering and often reversing most forms of enemy ambushes, force-on-force ambushes have largely gone away, and the insurgents have reverted to the use of mines, IEDs, and vehicles driven by suicide bombers.

While these IED and mine attacks in particular still continue to inflict casualties on coalition forces on a nearly daily basis, tactics and platforms are being developed to neutralize IEDs and mines. Coalition soldiers can and will continue to die as a result of these insurgent attacks, but these usually isolated attacks have little chance of viable long term tactical or strategic success.

As a result of their near complete failure to significantly impact the goals of coalition forces on either the strategic or tactical levels without sustaining heavy casualties of their own, the secular pro-Saddam elements of the insurgency are becoming marginalized and reticent to fight.

The insurgency that remains is now a force increasingly made up of non-Iraqi Arab Islamist fighters as the (largely Sunni) natives that made up the core of Iraqi insurgents seems to be less inclined to fight as the war continues without a weakening of coalition and Iraqi resolve.

These foreign fighters have united behind an al Qaeda terrorist leader named al-Zarqawi, and have in the past two years shifted their tactics several times, and each tactical decision has compounded the threat to their position. It is precisely because of these shifts that Vice President Cheney's prediction of the end of the Iraqi insurgency by 2009 is not only probable, but a conservative estimate of the actual timetable.

It is quite likely that any widespread insurgency in Iraq will fall apart well before the end of the Bush administration. It is possible that the insurgency will collapse by early 2007, and it could conceivably devolve from its current level of operations into local, cell-level operations with little or no widespread planning and coordination capabilities by as early as late 2005.

When this occurs, the disintegration of the insurgency will come as a shock to many, but it should really come as hardly a surprise at all.

The insurgency learned early on that it could not fight even a semi-conventional war against even the most fragile elements of coalition military forces. Once it became apparent through the elections of John Howard in Australia and George Bush in America that coalition nations would not capitulate to the anti-involvement Left's desire to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, the insurgency turned upon the Iraqi people and its government as their only remaining soft targets.

When the insurgents began attacking Iraqi targets, any slight chance they had of winning a stalemate (their only real hope) turned to ash. When al-Zarqawi's loyalists began assassinating political and community leaders, murdering police officers, and detonating car bombs in crowds of civilians, they not only lost and credibility they had had with the Iraqi people, they steeled Iraqi resolve.

The al-Zarqawi-mandated attacks against polling places before and during Iraq's January elections proved that al-Zarqawi and his supporters were anything but freedom fighters; they were enemy of the Iraqi people. They were not insurgents or Michael Moore's minutemen. They were--and are--terrorists.

Any lingering sympathy for the terrorists evaporated with the recent spate of suicide bombings in April and the al-Zarqawi announcement that the killing of Iraqi civilians was justified, as al-Zarqawi considers them "collaborators" under his radical fundamentalist version of Islam.

Because of the actions of al-Zarqawi and his followers, few Iraqis are willing to suddenly join a terror organization that may call upon them to murder their families, neighbors, and friends. It is becoming increasingly apparent to even the most disenchanted Sunni Baathists that the terrorists are far more of a threat to them than are coalition forces or the newly-formed Iraqi government.

The terrorists will lose the war in Iraq; it is simply a matter of when they will lose. Vice President Cheney predicts by 2009. Based upon al-Zarqawi's ability to galvanize Iraqi opinion against the insurgency, it may be far sooner than that.

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