. . . concerns the replacement of coliseums.

This story provides a helpful reminder not to generalize too broadly:

A new Palestinian movement being launched today is aimed at the moderate middle of Muslim politics.

Wasatia—Arabic for “moderation”—is the first Islamic religious party to advocate a peaceful, negotiated settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and a tolerant, democratic society at home

The new party is the brainchild of political science Professor Mohammed Dajani, director of the American Studies Institute at Al-Quds University in East Jerusalem. . . .

“We want to foster a culture of moderation so that our children do not grow up just with the literature of hate and violence,” he said. “We want our children to grow up in a culture where people can co-exist in peace and harmony.”

Hear, hear. This is precisely what is needed.

But will it gain any traction?

Let’s hope so.

A follow-up to the earlier post below, “What We’re Up Against,” is this editorial from Investor’s Business Daily. Money graf:

Palestinian parents have been known to take out classified ads in local papers celebrating the death of their offspring in jihad. They read like wedding announcements.

Some occasionally try to draw a false moral equivalence between the inadvertent and unintentional killing of children by American military forces in Iraq and Afghanistan and the cult of death that encourages and celebrates the deaths of children. For more on that subject, check out—again—the invaluable work of Memri.org, such as “Iranian Animated Film for Children Promotes Suicide Attacks”. There is simply no U.S. (or Israeli—must mention Israel, I suppose) equivalent to the state-sponsored glorification of the killing of innocents that is common in many Arab states.

And then there are these photos, from the Ashura observance (a day of mourning for Husayn ibn Ali, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad), during which cutting and self-flaggelation as forms of blood offering occur among the Shi’a. Before there is any knee-jerking about beating up on Islam as a whole, let’s stipulate that not all Shi’a participate in the flagellation, nor does all flagellation occur in the Islamic world. Los Hermanos Penitentes (a group of Catholic men in New Mexico and Colorado) engage in flagellation and other forms of body mortification.

Still. If there were pictures of smiling Christian parents cutting their kids here in the U.S., we’d call Child Protective Services in a heartbeat. So, no, I wouldn’t say it’s beating up on Islam to suggest there is some seriously unhealthy thinking among a sizeable number of its adherents.

Schrodinger’s Reporting:

If the information being transmitted from media outlets explains that John Edwards is torn between two worlds, then the electorate will think he’s torn between two worlds. If it frames his campaign as the legitimate family choice, then it will be understood as a legitimate family choice. By reporting on reactions that haven’t happened, Carney calls them into being.

Something different and fun.

Here is a fascinating examination of growing inequality in America:

By and large, the biggest leisure gains have gone precisely to those with the most stagnant incomes—that is, the least skilled and the least educated. And conversely, the smallest leisure gains have been concentrated among the most educated, the same group that’s had the biggest gains in income.

That raises a pretty interesting chicken-and-egg question, doesn’t it? Do people with less money have less money, at least in some instances and to some extent, because they work less?

The author also makes another gotcha point:

[Y]ou could conclude that something must be done to reverse the trends of the past 40 years—say, by rounding up all those folks with extra time on their hands and putting them to (unpaid) work in the kitchens of their “less fortunate” neighbors. If you think it’s OK to redistribute income but repellent to redistribute leisure, you might want to ask yourself what—if anything—is the fundamental difference.

. . . explains why the U.S. gets a bum rap on infant-mortality (and, by extension, average life-expectancy) comparisons among nations.

A recent conversation—the identities of the participants will be held confidential—turned to the subject of bad music. The question was raised, “What song are you most embarrassed to admit you like?” Answers included “She Works Hard for the Money” by Donna Summer, “You Shook Me All Night Long” by AC/DC, and “Come on, Eileen” by Dexy’s Midnight Runners.

Britney Spears also came up.

And now the question turns to you, dear reader: What do you listen to under the covers at night?

C’mon—‘fess. It’s good for the soul.

Update: My own guiltiest pleasure probably is “Cruisin’,” by Michael Nesmith. You probably know it as the song about Lucy and Ramona and their brother Sunset Sam.

In the Mideast, militants do not shrink from blowing up kids if it will help them blow up other innocents:

Maj. Gen. Michael Barbero, deputy director for regional operations in the Joint Staff at the Pentagon, said adults in a vehicle with two children in the backseat were allowed through a Baghdad checkpoint on Sunday.

The adults then parked next to a market in the Adamiya area of Baghdad, abandoned the vehicle and detonated it with the children still inside, according to the general and another defense official.

And if that’s not enough to keep you awake at night, read this.

Excerpt:

[T]FBI is warning local police to be alert for Muslim extremists hijacking school buses. . .  .

The FBI and Homeland Security Department last week sent out a bulletin to law enforcement across the country warning that Muslims with ‘ties to extremist groups’ are signing up to be school bus drivers. They also noted ‘recent suspicious activity’ by foreigners who drive school buses or are licensed to drive them.

Recent events come on top of several other school bus-related incidents involving Mideast men that raise suspicion of terror activity.

They include last year’s surprise boarding of a school bus in Florida by two Saudi men dressed in trench coats. Authorities suspect they were making a dry run to see how easy it would be to hijack or blow up a school bus filled with American children.

Previously, an Arab man from Detroit was caught trying to obtain a job as a school bus driver in New York using fake Social Security documents.

Authorities fear the school massacre that took place in Beslan, Russia, in 2004 may be a dress rehearsal for what al-Qaida plans to do here. Chechen terrorists tied to al-Qaida seized a building in Beslan on the first day of school and slaughtered 338, including 172 kids. . . .

It’s a grim picture. But don’t think for a moment that al-Qaida is above targeting school children. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed said in his Gitmo confession that while he may not like killing kids, they’re fair game in jihad. . . .

Are we witnessing with Muslim men trying to obtain bus licenses what some alert (but ignored) agents witnessed before 9/11 when they noticed a number of Muslim men training to obtain pilot’s licenses?

. . . And I use “geek” in the complimentary sense.

Here is an entertaining local post about the creator of the computer programming language, FORTRAN, including an amusing outtake from a FORTRAN manual.

For those of us who still sometimes get hung up on exactly what is meant by “right-click,” the folks who can write instructions that make computers, you know, do things—who can actually create the programs that we mortals can barely operate—are on the level of shamans. They have strange, magical powers. We need them, and we’re a little afraid of them.

The post also contains a link to the highly interesting Wikipedia history of FORTRAN.

For reasons I won’t bore you with, I’ve been re-reading Jonathan Edwards’ “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”:

That world of misery, that lake of burning brimstone, is extended abroad under you. There is the dreadful pit of the glowing flames of the wrath of God; there is hell’s wide gaping mouth open; and you have nothing to stand upon, nor any thing to take hold of; there is nothing between you and hell but the air; it is only the power and mere pleasure of God that holds you up.

Anyone out there been to a church lately where the preacher tells you the only reason you aren’t burning in the fiery pits of hell right now is the restraint of a God who is furious with you?

Me either.

These days, the megachurches are packing them in with the gospel of prosperity and upbeat messages telling you to cast your cares away, because everything’s just fine the way it is, including you. They’re not what anyone would call particularly demanding (except possibly when passing the plate).

On the other hand, they’re not advocating the burning of witches or the bombing of Jewish schoolbuses, either. There’s a lot to be said for equanimity—even if it doesn’t lend itself to thunderous sermons.

Angela Ivey, director of veterinary medicine at the Richmond SPCA, shared some insights on the subject last month on the “Dog Blog/CatChat” here. (Scroll down to “Medical Impact of Chaining,” February 16.)

One of the digressionary trails of Second Amendment debate concerns the practicality of local militias

in the age of the attack helicopter

and the heavy tank

and it goes like this:

Assuming for the sake of argument that one purpose of the right to keep and bear arms is to be able to throw off the yoke of a government that has become oppressive, such argument (and by extension the Amendment itself) is now no longer operative, because there is no way a bunch of yahoos with varmint guns and revolvers can stand up against an Apache gunship or the Abrams tank.

On that point, the experience of the U.S. military in Iraq should be quite instructive. Contrariwise, as Sanford Levinson points out, the U.S. might want to reconsider its official position regarding the disarmament of Iraqi militias, mightn’t it?

Wordsmith’s word-a-day e-mail service has been on a tear lately. Some recent entries:

MISOLOGY -- hated of logic or reason.
OMPHALOSKEPSIS -- contemplation of one’s navel.
POGONOTROPHY -- the growing of a beard.

You can sign up here.

If there were a major demonstration in support of the Iraq war in D.C., and if the principal sponsor of the demonstration had strong ties to, say, the American Nazi Party, wouldn’t you expect that fact to feature somewhere in the coverage of the demonstration?

Sure you would. But of all the articles about the recent anti-war protests, few mentioned that the primary sponsor was the ANSWER Coalition. And only one—The New York Times, to its credit—made even passing reference to the Coalition’s deep, incestuous roots in the Workers World Party (WWP) and a “breakaway faction,” the Party for Socialism and Liberation.

The WWP is a Communist outfit. Literally. It’s not merely kinda Communist, it is hard-core Communist. It broke with the Socialist Workers Party because, among other things, the WWP supported the Chinese Revolution and the 1956 Soviet invasion of Hungary that crushed a democratic uprising and killed thousands of civilians. The Party for Socialism and Liberation isn’t exactly moderate, either: It’s pro-Castro and pro-Cultural Revolution.

Yet of this fact there was nary a word. Perhaps that’s because, for some reason, many Americans view literal Communists as quaint, even mildly romantic, and give them a pass for their support of totalitarianism. But how weird is that? Nobody would dream of extending such tolerance toward literal Nazis, and nobody should. Hitler watches and Eichmann posters aren’t cool in the kitschy, retro-ironic way that Mao mousepads and Che posters are (thank Heaven).

The point here isn’t to imply anything about the war itself (that’s a different subject entirely) or impute guilt by association to the many well-meaning individuals who showed up at the protests. The point is simply to note the weird silence about the backstory of the organizers. Apparently, it’s almost irrelevant to many that something like 100 million innocents died under the Communist jackboot in the past century—and that some folks around are perfectly fine with that. 

You’re probably doing a better job than you think.

. . . is now online.

Tomorrow’s column will discuss the issue. The photos below make up something of a compare-and-contrast essay on the subject, in pictures.

A while back I wrote about people who act as if they are playing SimCity with the real world.

For a perfect example of what the analogy was trying to illustrate, read this.

P.S.—My favorite comment on the post has got to be this one:

Translation: It’s all a capitalist plot! Isn’t there some sort of corollary to the John Birch Society on the left? (Oh, wait, yes—the NEA.)

Apparently there is some sort of team-sports tournament going on in which Virginia colleges are involved. ("Committee sports,” as my father always refers to them.) But everyone knows deep down there is only one real, worthy form of competition: mano a mano, in the ring.

This video is a helpful reminder that for strikers, hitting is only half of it. The other half is not getting hit.

That’s the subject of today’s column, which amounts to an executive summary of the majority in the Parker ruling about D.C.’s gun ban, with some throat-clearing by yours truly in the first few grafs. To paraphrase Mark Twain, I’m sorry the piece is so long, but I didn’t have time to make it shorter.