April 23, 2009
During an interview with FOXNews.com, [Miss USA Kristen] Dalton said: "In short, I would say everyone should be able to enter into a civil union, where they're legally recognized as a couple and earn the same rights as a married couple."
Asked if she supports gay marriage, Miss USA replied, "I'm not going to say whether or not I think it should be defined as marriage because that's up to our politicians and our elected officials."
And precisely where, Kristen, do you think the power of those politicians and elected officials is derived. It is derived from the people – you and I. For you to say “that's up to our politicians and our elected officials” is to reject your birthright as an American and relegate yourself to the status of subject rather than citizen.
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MSNBC show host Rachel Maddow has suffered some steep audience erosion in recent months, down more than 40 percent in viewership from her peak last fall during the election.According to the Los Angeles Times, Maddow's audience has gone from a high of 1.9 million viewers in the fall to just over 1.1 million in March. That's a big drop.”
Is it any wonder, then, that the stockholders of MSNBCÂ’s parent company are angry about the product being put out, and its harm to their stock values?
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April 20, 2009
Miss North Carolina Kristen Dalton was crowned Miss USA on Sunday, but the big story to come out of the normally politics-free telecast was Miss California's comments regarding gay marriage.When asked by judge Perez Hilton, an openly gay gossip blogger, whether she believed in gay marriage, Miss California, Carrie Prejean, said "We live in a land where you can choose same-sex marriage or opposite. And you know what, I think in my country, in my family, I think that I believe that a marriage should be between a man and a woman. No offense to anybody out there, but that's how I was raised."
Keith Lewis, who runs the Miss California competition, tells FOXNews.com that he was "saddened" by Prejean's statement.
"As co-director of the Miss California USA, I am personally saddened and hurt that Miss California believes marriage rights belong only to a man and a woman," said Lewis in a statement. "I believe all religions should be able to ordain what unions they see fit. I do not believe our government should be able to discriminate against anyone and religious beliefs have no politics in the Miss California family."
Co-director Shanna Moakler told FOXNews.com that she fully supported Lewis' statement.
In other words, it is unacceptable for competitors to hold and express the views supported by a majority of Californians last fall.
Oh, yeah – and how does the ever-so-tolerant Perez Hilton deal with the matter? With a typically classless comment about Carrie Prejean.
Hilton, the self proclaimed “Queen of all media” who has campaigned for gay equal rights, called the answer “the worst answer in pageant history”.On a video blog on his website Hilton said, “She lost not because she doesn’t believe in gay marriage, she lost because she’s a dumb bitch!”
Of course, what Hilton does not say is that the reason she is a “dumb bitch” is because she had the integrity to state that she believes what the vast majority of Americans believe, not what an intolerant degenerate media whore like Perez Hilton and his left-wing companions in the pageant movement wanted her to say.
H/T Malkin
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April 15, 2009
Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) and a growing number of national security experts are calling on Congress to consider using letters of marque and reprisal, a power written into the Constitution that allows the United States to hire private citizens to keep international waters safe.Used heavily during the Revolution and the War of 1812, letters of marque serve as official warrants from the government, allowing privateers to seize or destroy enemies, their loot and their vessels in exchange for bounty money.
The letters also require would-be thrill seekers to post a bond promising to abide by international rules of war.In a YouTube video earlier this week, Paul suggested lawmakers consider issuing letters, which could relieve American naval ships from being the nation’s primary pirate responders — a free-market solution to make the high seas safer for cargo ships.
Frankly, it sounds like a great idea to me. And best of all, it would give incentive to shipping lines to arm their crews – after all, they would get a piece of the action after having been officially authorized to act in their own defense.
There was a time, my friends, when Americans would defend themselves when confronted by evil. This is an opportunity to do so again, in the best tradition of the United States.
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French forces detained 11 suspected pirates during an assault on what they described as a pirate “mother ship” in the Indian Ocean off the eastern coast of Somalia Wednesday, less than 24 hours after an American cargo ship was attacked by pirates in the same region.
LetÂ’s see Barack Obama follow the French lead on this one. After all, piracy on the high seas is an offense against all nations, and cannot be tolerated.
And especially now that there has been this development.
Somali pirates who attacked an American freighter with rocket-propelled grenades were not trying to capture it but to destroy it as an act of revenge, one of their commanders claimed today.The LIberty Sun, carrying a cargo of food aid for Africa's starving millions, was attacked yesterday afternoon by two speedboats some 285 nautical miles off the Somali coast.
* * * “This attack was the first against our prime target,” Abdi Garad, a pirate commander, said today. “We intended to destroy this American-flagged ship and the crew on board but unfortunately they narrowly escaped us.
“The aim of this attack was totally different. We were not after a ransom. We also assigned a team with special equipment to chase and destroy any ship flying the American flag in retaliation for the brutal killing of our friends."
Forget capture – blow them out of the water so that the weenies from the ACLU don’t get them into federal court. The only process these mutts are due is death – either from the barrel of Navy guns or hanging from the modern-day equivalent of a yardarm.
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Sunspot activity may be a primary factor in climate fluctuations, according to Willie Soon, a researcher affiliated with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and the Harvard College Observatory, who offered the hypothesis in an interview with TG Daily, an online news source.
* * * “The sun is a great driving force to climate change,” Soon said in an interview with The Crimson yesterday, adding that most observed climate data could be explained by fluctuations in solar radiation.
Sunspots—pockets of magnetism on the sun’s surface—generate high levels of energy, which then heat the Earth’s atmosphere.
Soon told TG Daily that the lack of additional energy resulting from a decrease in sunspots is directly responsible for colder temperatures experienced in recent years.
Decreased solar energy connected to cool temperatures and increased solar energy connected to warm temperatures. What a novel concept!
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Sunspot activity may be a primary factor in climate fluctuations, according to Willie Soon, a researcher affiliated with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and the Harvard College Observatory, who offered the hypothesis in an interview with TG Daily, an online news source.
* * * “The sun is a great driving force to climate change,” Soon said in an interview with The Crimson yesterday, adding that most observed climate data could be explained by fluctuations in solar radiation.
Sunspots—pockets of magnetism on the sun’s surface—generate high levels of energy, which then heat the Earth’s atmosphere.
Soon told TG Daily that the lack of additional energy resulting from a decrease in sunspots is directly responsible for colder temperatures experienced in recent years.
Decreased solar energy connected to cool temperatures and increased solar energy connected to warm temperatures. What a novel concept!
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April 13, 2009
There are, however, some folks who are simply not happy with this American success – other than the pirates, of course. They inhabit that dark realm known as Daily Kos, where this was posted.
Captain Phillips of the Maersk Alabama recklessly put himself, the crew, and the Navy Seals at unnecessary risk.The pirates' modus operandi is that they hold the crew, ship, and cargo harmlessly until a lot of money is paid to them. Phillips "heroic" actions put his crew and himself at risk. If he'd done nothing except acquiesce to the pirates' demands, there would have been no risk, just possible discomfort until the extortion money was paid. Instead he put himself and the Seals at grave risk.
I applaud the crew, the Seals, and the military chain of command for their actions. I think Phillips was in error--if not a grandstander, then greatly misguided. Does anyone know what Maersk's orders to Phillips and the other Maersk masters are in a piracy matter? Probably to do nothing to incite trouble and to notify the shipowner and the U.S. Navy. The captain works for the shipowner and must follow those orders. The master who fails to follow the shipowner's orders is guilty of the crime of barratry if a financial injury to the shipowner results.
The actual result is that Maersk, the shipowner, saved a lot of money that would have been lost with the ship inactive and off charter while it sat idle in a pirate port. Is this worth the deadly risk to the crew and the Seals? Not to me.
Sort of like complaining that a rape victim didnÂ’t just lie back and enjoy it, donÂ’t you think?
Now to their credit, some folks did condemn this diarist. But some did so on the basis that the words above make Daily Kos look bad, not because they are wrong. And still others agreed with the diarist whole-heartedly.
And lest you think that I am attacking that site unnecessarily, please remember that its founder once responded to the murder and mutilation of Americans by terrorists in Iraq with the words “Fuck ‘em.” As such, it is hard to argue that support for those who terrorize or kill Americans is an isolated thing on the site.
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BARACK OBAMAÂ’s half-brother has been refused entry to Britain after reportedly being accused of an attempted sex attack on a 13-year-old girl on his last visit.
Samson Obama, who runs a mobile phone shop in Nairobi in Kenya, was on his way to the presidentÂ’s inauguration in January when he tried to stop over in Britain to visit relatives. But he was turned away by immigration officers who declined to issue a visa on the grounds of deception.
Is this a case of sloppy reporting? Or is it a case of double standards at work – of trying not to embarrass Obama or not caring about incidents involving Democrats? And especially given other issues involving this particular Obama, will the press dig a little bit deeper into his life, his ideology, and his relationship with his half-brother?
And then there is the fact that he was traveling on forged travel documents. Why didnÂ’t OUR border security people pick that up? Or is there a special policy waiving normal border checks for members of the Obama family?
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Make no mistake -- the earth has warmed. Unfortunately for the climate-change catastrophists, warming periods have occurred throughout recorded history, long before the Industrial Revolution and SUVs began spitting man-made carbon into the atmosphere. And as might be expected, these warm periods have invariably proven a blessing for humanity. Consider:Around the 3rd century B.C., the planet emerged from a long cold spell. The warm period which followed lasted about 700 years, and since it coincided with the rise of Pax Romana, it is known as the Roman Warming.
In the 5th century A.D., the earth's climate became cooler. Cold and drought pushed the tribes of northern Europe south against the Roman frontier. Rome was sacked, and the Dark Ages commenced. And it was a dark age, both metaphorically and literally -- the sun's light dimmed and gave little warmth; harvest seasons grew shorter and yielded less. Life expectancy and literacy plummeted. The plague appeared and decimated whole populations.
Then, inexplicably, about 900 A.D. things began to warm. This warming trend would last almost 400 years, a well documented era known as the Medieval Warm Period. Once again, as temperatures rose harvests and populations grew. Vineyards made their way into Northern Europe, including Britain. Art and science flourished in what we now know as the Renaissance.
Then around 1300 A.D. things cooled drastically. This cold spell would last almost 500 years, a severe climate event known as the Little Ice Age. Millions died in famine as glaciers advanced all over the world. The plague returned. In Greenland, the Norse colony that had been established during the Medieval Warming froze and starved. Arctic pack ice descended south, pushing Inuit peoples to the shores of Scotland. People ice skated on the Thames; they walked from Staten Island to Manhattan over a frozen New York Harbor. The year 1816 was remembered as the year without a summer, with some portions of the Northern Hemisphere seeing snowfall in June.
But around 1850 the planet began to warm up yet again. Glaciers retreated. Temperatures rose. This is the warming period which we are still enjoying today. And once again, the warmth brought bounty: The last 150 years have seen an explosion in life expectancy, population, and scientific progress like never before.
Of course, even before the appearance of humans, the earth alternated throughout its history between extremes of heat and cold: 700 million years ago the planet was covered entirely in ice; 55 million years ago, a swampy greenhouse.
Is this to argue that we should ignore the environment and continue to pollute the earth? Hardly – there are plenty of good reasons to cut back on pollution and otherwise protect the environment. Burning oil and coal have detrimental effects on the environment and should be reduced. But to argue that humanity is responsible for any recent warming trend (and there is plenty of evidence that there isn’t such a trend or that it has ended) is absurd and alarmist – and frankly discredits the notion that we should make an effort to keep the earth clean for the health of the planet.
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Make no mistake -- the earth has warmed. Unfortunately for the climate-change catastrophists, warming periods have occurred throughout recorded history, long before the Industrial Revolution and SUVs began spitting man-made carbon into the atmosphere. And as might be expected, these warm periods have invariably proven a blessing for humanity. Consider:Around the 3rd century B.C., the planet emerged from a long cold spell. The warm period which followed lasted about 700 years, and since it coincided with the rise of Pax Romana, it is known as the Roman Warming.
In the 5th century A.D., the earth's climate became cooler. Cold and drought pushed the tribes of northern Europe south against the Roman frontier. Rome was sacked, and the Dark Ages commenced. And it was a dark age, both metaphorically and literally -- the sun's light dimmed and gave little warmth; harvest seasons grew shorter and yielded less. Life expectancy and literacy plummeted. The plague appeared and decimated whole populations.
Then, inexplicably, about 900 A.D. things began to warm. This warming trend would last almost 400 years, a well documented era known as the Medieval Warm Period. Once again, as temperatures rose harvests and populations grew. Vineyards made their way into Northern Europe, including Britain. Art and science flourished in what we now know as the Renaissance.
Then around 1300 A.D. things cooled drastically. This cold spell would last almost 500 years, a severe climate event known as the Little Ice Age. Millions died in famine as glaciers advanced all over the world. The plague returned. In Greenland, the Norse colony that had been established during the Medieval Warming froze and starved. Arctic pack ice descended south, pushing Inuit peoples to the shores of Scotland. People ice skated on the Thames; they walked from Staten Island to Manhattan over a frozen New York Harbor. The year 1816 was remembered as the year without a summer, with some portions of the Northern Hemisphere seeing snowfall in June.
But around 1850 the planet began to warm up yet again. Glaciers retreated. Temperatures rose. This is the warming period which we are still enjoying today. And once again, the warmth brought bounty: The last 150 years have seen an explosion in life expectancy, population, and scientific progress like never before.
Of course, even before the appearance of humans, the earth alternated throughout its history between extremes of heat and cold: 700 million years ago the planet was covered entirely in ice; 55 million years ago, a swampy greenhouse.
Is this to argue that we should ignore the environment and continue to pollute the earth? Hardly – there are plenty of good reasons to cut back on pollution and otherwise protect the environment. Burning oil and coal have detrimental effects on the environment and should be reduced. But to argue that humanity is responsible for any recent warming trend (and there is plenty of evidence that there isn’t such a trend or that it has ended) is absurd and alarmist – and frankly discredits the notion that we should make an effort to keep the earth clean for the health of the planet.
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April 11, 2009
A bias in favor of male offspring has left China with 32 million more boys under the age of 20 than girls, creating “an imminent generation of excess men,” a study released Friday said.For the next 20 years, China will have increasingly more men than women of reproductive age, according to the paper, which was published online by the British Medical Journal. “Nothing can be done now to prevent this,” the researchers said.
Chinese government planners have long known that the urge of couples to have sons was skewing the gender balance of the population. But the study, by two Chinese university professors and a London researcher, provides some of the first hard data on the extent of the disparity and the factors contributing to it.
In 2005 , they found, births of boys in China exceeded births of girls by more than 1.1 million. There were 120 boys born for every 100 girls.
I tried to get my students to consider the demographic implications of this development. Being fifteen, their immediate question was "does that mean a bunch of guys are going to have to turn gay?" But after giving the matter some more serious consideration, they actually drew some of the same conclusions that are noted in the study that prompted this article -- that the nation's one child policy and the traditional Chinese preference for boys were the cause. They also raised the issue of possible increases in crime and the availability of "excess young men" for military service as possible ramifications of the trend. Smart kids -- but scary numbers.
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April 10, 2009
Dog-crazy Americans will soon be able to buy a pet-friendly car with a cushioned dog bed in the trunk, fitted with a built-in water bowl and fan and a ramp to help less agile dogs climb in.With the help of a rescue dog named Sammy, Japanese car maker Honda Motor Co unveiled the pet friendly version of its Element utility vehicle at the New York Auto Show.
It features easy-wash seat covers, a fitted dog bed with restraints to keep Sammy safe in the event of a crash, and a paw logo on the side. Honda said the car would go on sale across the United States from the fall of this year.
Honda spokesman Sage Marie said it was designed with both safety and comfort in mind. "(It's) a car we think is of interest to many of today's dog-crazy consumers," he said.
Now here’s my question – will Honda consider adding these features to something other than an SUV? After all, many of us do seek smaller, more fuel efficient cars for a variety of reasons.
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April 08, 2009
In light of SUU officials plan to designate "Free Speech Zones" on campus, I thought I'd offer my assistance. Grab a map. OK, ready?All right, you see that big area between Canada and Mexico, surrounded by lots of blue ink on the East and West? You see it?
There's your bloody Free Speech Zone.
Jeffrey Wilbur
Senior communication major from Bountiful
I don't know about you, but young Mr. Wilbur is certainly my kind of American -- and one whose view on the matter of freedom of speech exactly dovetails with my own. Here's hoping that there are many more like him in the rising generation, for if there are then our liberty will be secure.
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April 07, 2009
Luis Cervantes Salazar was executed last month for the stabbing murder of a woman in October 1997. But shortly before his death, he was encouraged by his spiritual counselor to speak with Texas Rangers about other crimes he committed.He confessed to the 1992 stabbing of a convenience store clerk in San Antonio, just an hour and a half before he was executed.
San Antonio police say his confession solved the murder of Melissa Morales. Salazar had not previously been considered a suspect.
My only problem with this is that we werenÂ’t told about this when the execution happened. After all, there was no reason to withhold the information from the public.
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April 06, 2009
As Robert Tolan and his cousin approached the front door, officers, who erroneously had been advised Tolan was driving a stolen car, arrived and ordered the pair to the ground. Tolan family members said that as they attempted to tell officers about the mistake, police pushed the young manÂ’s mother against a wall.Tolan attempted to rise to protest and was wounded as Cotton fired his weapon multiple times. Lawyers for Tolan, who is black, have argued that the shooting resulted from racial profiling by white law officers.
The problem is that there was never really any reason to suspect that Tolan was engaged in any criminal activity. He was just a black guy driving in a nice area in a nice car – must be a criminal. And having witnessed the unprovoked assault on his mother by a rogue cop, Tolan had the audacity to try to stand up – and was grievously wounded as the cop unloaded his gun into him. While I’ll be the first to admit that I have a pro-police bias (my brother is a cop), I can’t see any justification for the conduct of Sgt. Jeffery Cotton. If there is any, let him present it at trial.
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His online profile suggests someone at once lonely and seething. He wrote of burning the backs of both of his hands, the first time with a cigarette, the second time for symmetry. He subscribed to conspiracy theories and, by January 2007, was posting photographs of his tattoos on white supremacist Web site Stormfront. Among his ambitions: “to accumulate enough ‘I punched that [expletive] so hard’ stories to match my old man.”
So let’s see – we have a mentally disturbed, socially isolated racist loon engaging in precisely the sort of anti-social activity that such folks have engaged in from time immemorial. Some of his beliefs track with mainstream conservatism, but more of it tracks with fringe beliefs that are rejected by mainstream conservatives. For the Left to try to claim otherwise is to attempt to perpetrate the “big lie” in order to delegitimize the beliefs of a sizeable portion of the American people AND portions of the US Constitution. Indeed, the next step will be to demand government action to silence certain “dangerous” points of view that they claim are not in the best interest of the nation to allow to be expressed. Indeed, by repeatedly claiming that “Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh” and other mainstream commentators and politicians are responsible for the crimes of Poplawski, they are engaged in rhetorical excesses that exceed anything in the words of those who they are demonizing. After all, not one of the targeted conservatives has called for acts of violence against political opponents, while the same cannot be said of many of their critics on the Left.
H/T LGF, Don Surber
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• • Most Texans’ paychecks will be a little fatter starting this month as the Making Work Pay tax credit kicks in and employers reduce their payroll tax withholdings by about $13 a week.• • Texas’ jobless are now receiving an extra $25 a week in their benefits as mandated by Congress, according to the Texas Workforce Commission.
• • Food stamp recipients soon will get about $38 a month more to spend on necessities, according to the Texas Health and Human Services Commission.
And before you feel all warm and fuzzy over Barry Hussein’s plan to let you keep enough of your earnings to take a family of four to McDonald’s once a week, consider this – at the end of the year, you will likely be paying that same cash to the government. You see, you didn’t get a tax reduction – all that this represents is a delay in you having to turn the cash over to Timothy “Taxes for thee but not for me” Geithner. So expect a tax bill this time next year if you are a productive American in exchange for your $50 a month increase in take-home pay. On the other hand, the non-productive will come out with about $140 extra in benefits extorted from the productive.
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April 04, 2009
Kevin Greene, a former coworker at the vacuum plant, recalled asking him if he liked the New York Yankees baseball team. “No,” Voong replied. “I don’t like that team. I don’t like America. America sucks.” Another former employee said that Voong “kept to himself but made some off-the-wall comments like he wanted to kill the president”.
Hello! When someone starts talking about shooting the president, pick the phone up and call the cops -- or better yet, call the Secret Service. Don't assume that he is just blowing off steam or expressing some sort of dissent -- report him to the authorities. That is a line you don't let anyone cross -- whether the president in question is named George Bush or Barack Obama. In this case, doing so would have prevented a serious tragedy.
In a related note, Michelle Malkin notes that the anti-gun Left is already at work trying to blame any and all conservatives for the crimes of Jiverly Voong.
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The New York Times Company has threatened to close The Boston Globe unless labor unions agree to concessions like pay cuts and the cessation of pension contributions, according to a person briefed on the talks.The company is looking for $20 million in savings from The Globe, which has already gone through several rounds of deep cost-cutting and staff reductions. The company does not report figures by newspaper, but executives have acknowledged that the Globe lost tens of millions of dollars last year.
The threat to close The Globe was first reported by The Globe on Friday evening on its Web site, Boston.com. The site quoted the leaders of two of the unions describing a meeting Thursday at which the company delivered the ultimatum.
Will we see special legislation to punish NYT corporate execs for their actions? Will we see efforts by the federal government out the failing liberal rag that may be shut down? And will the editorial staff of the New York Times condemn the culture of greed in their own corporate boardroom -- or are those simply reserved for WalMart and bond traders?
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Freedom of thought and freedom of expression are essential in the pursuit of reason. It is reason that will lead us to truth, and the pursuit of truth has been the driving force behind progress since the Enlightenment. We cannot afford to abandon these principles now.People are so afraid of saying the wrong thing that we have blundered into a state of what you could call valuephobia. But modern, tolerant and secular society does not have to be a valueless society. Tolerance is not the same as surrender. Although we tolerate the views and ideas of others, we do not have to accept the creed of moral equivalence. Just because a state does not have a formal affinity to a particular religion does not mean it should avoid a robust system of values. For the most part, our concept of right and wrong is in tune with our basic instincts, and our understanding of the consequences of our actions. These values are codified by religions, not invented by them. There are other, different, non- religious values which are part of our heritage - the concept of looking after those who cannot look after themselves, of hard work, perseverance and saving for a rainy day. States cannot operate without values, and the seemingly all-pervasive fear of causing offence needs to be balanced by the benefits of clear guidance on what is desirable behaviour.
Indeed, we encounter much too much of this very sort of stuff today. Too often we see expressed in our public dialogue the notion that the only thing that is absolutely morally wrong is believing and stating that something is absolutely morally wrong. In the name of not imposing religious values we have seen values that are held by the overwhelming majority or Americans stripped from our laws in the name of a "tolerance" that will tolerate anything but the views of that majority. When will we recognize that the celebration of diversity that so many insist is a part of tolerance also requires a healthy respect for the opinions, values, and beliefs of those who constitute the majority rather than merely those of the minority?
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April 02, 2009
If the pen is mightier than the sword, then criminalizing words is a way of disarming potential opposition, of inculcating a reflexive self-censorship in the citizenry. And, after all, self-suppression is the most cost-effective of tyranny. Political correctness isn’t merely the blasphemy law of our time. It makes communication impossible. It renders a people literally illiterate: the conventions of language used by functioning societies throughout human history—irony, indirect quotation, period evocation, and, yes, even comic stereotype—are all suddenly suspect. What a strange fate to embrace. In London, the Lord Chamberlain’s power to censor West End plays was finally abolished in 1968: it was widely accepted by then that there was something absurd in a palace courtier ruling that your script could have three “Bastards!” but not four, and that two specific references to sodomy had to be replaced with one vague allusion to heavy petting. Yet, four decades on, Britons now think it entirely normal for police constables and time-serving bureaucrats to function as literary critics determining the “intent” behind a throwaway jest.To hell with it, and to hell with “sensitivity training.” The only way a multicultural society can live in freedom is with what the Toronto blogger Kathy Shaidle calls “insensitivity training”: we all need to develop thicker skin and rub along—without government monitoring. “CSI Catskills” is a totalitarian concept, and only a bunch of fairies would fall for it.
And just to clarify: IÂ’m not saying youÂ’re a fairy if you have sex with other men.
I am saying youÂ’re a fairy if you think the state should police our jokes.
Indeed, I wonder if any of the favorite shows mentioned above could really meet the standard set by the new law. And having seen PC sensitivities ratcheted up in this country in recent years, I know that this has diminished our entertainment as well as our ability to confront prejudice through humor. After all, could All In The Family be made today? I doubt it, even though the humor that would be forbidden is the sort of stuff that actually ridiculed the insensitive rather than their targets. After all, mockery has its place – and it is not the place of government to decide whose views are correct and may therefore be expressed (and conversely, wrong and not to be expressed) on social and political issues.
For that matter, I wonder if Elton John -- himself a proud gay man – could possibly get away with making this classic song.
After all, not only wonÂ’t people be allowed to laugh, even making the joke in the first place would be a violation of the law.
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April 01, 2009
have some suggestions for your vocabulary:Rattlesnake - triangle-headed surface crawler
Black Widow Spider - red dotted black circle
Shark - fish with a toothy smile
Grizzly Bear - big cuddly fuzzball
Dynamite - stringed red stick
Ted Bundy - homo sapien with a slight attitude
Jeffrey Dahmer - peculiarly-appetited loner
Hey, they make as much sense as "man caused disasters" and "overseas contingency operations" for terrorism and the War on Terrorism (which really ought to be the Crusade Against Juhadi Swine).
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