Gaza’s Islamic Hamas government has banned men from working in women’s hair salons as part of its move to impose strict Islamic law and traditions on Gaza’s 1.5 million people.
Continue reading “Hamas Bans Male Hairdressers From Women’s Hair Salons”
Category: Politics
We have another story out of the worker’s paradise in North Korea. A North Korean factory worker named Chong was executed by firing squad for passing along information on rice and living conditions to a friend who defected to South Korea.
Continue reading “North Korea Executes Man For Passing Along the Price of Rice to Friend in South Korea”
State Sen. Roy Ashburn (R-Calif.) is known as a fierce opponent of gay rights. It was, therefore, more than a bit curious when he was arrested for drunk driving after reportedly leaving a gay bar with an unidentified man in the passenger seat.
Sawsan Salim went to court to file harassment complaints against her local government in 2007. Her papers were in order but she was missing one detail. She had ventured out without a male family escort. For that crime she has been sentenced to 300 lashes and 18 months in jail.
Bishop Denis Brennan (Bishop of Ferns in Ireland) is being criticized for asking parishioners to help to pay for compensation claims linked to sexual abuse damages. The diocese has already paid 8 million euros to settle 48 civil actions arising from decades of sexual abuse by priests. An additional 13 actions are pending.
The National Enquirer is reporting that a federal grand jury is close to indicting two-time presidential candidate John Edwards for the misuse of campaign funds. ABC News reported earlier that Edwards’ mistress (with whom he recently admitted having a child after months of denial) had spoken to the grand jury, here. In the meantime, there is an equally interesting report that Elizabeth Edwards may be preparing to sue her husband’s longtime aide Andrew Young for alienation of affection (here).
In yet another morphing of George Bush and Barack Obama, the Administration has indicated that it will include “tort reform” in the new and smaller health care bill — provisions that the CBO has said could cost 4,800 lives a year. While an estimated roughly 100,000 people die each year from malpractice, the Administration is about to make it more difficult to sue doctors and hospitals.
Continue reading “Obama To Cave On Tort Reform — Adding Provisions to Health Bill That Could Kill 4,800 a Year”
While Christopher Sheehan is being prosecuted in Florida in a case involving his iron garden, here, Quan and Angelina Ha are being prosecuted in California for their wood chip garden. The Has sought to conserve water in the drought-plagued City of Orange by replacing their lawn with eco-friendly plants and chips. They have now been charged with a misdemeanor and told that they must have a water-consuming lawn.
Today, the Supreme Court will take up the potentially historic case of McDonald v. Chicago on gun rights. There is more at stake than just the application of the Second Amendment to the states, as I discussed in today’s column in Roll Call below:
Continue reading “Gunning for Slaughterhouse? Supreme Court Hears Arguments in McDonald Gun Case”
There is an interesting controversy brewing in Atlanta where an all-white Zeta Tau Alpha team from the University of Arkansas won this year’s step competition — a traditionally black competition. The victory unleashed a torrent of criticism from fans who felt that white teams should be barred. The controversy then grew when Sprite suddenly announced that unexplained “scoring discrepancies” resulted in a black team being elevated to a tie with Arkansas and given a co-first place standing. This is a video of “The Matrix” performance of the Arkansas team
Dubai police now say that they have identified 26 suspects in the assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh — widely believed to be a Mossad operation. The government also released toxicology reports that show that Al-Mabhouh was first drugged and then suffocated.
Continue reading “Dubai Police: Al-Mabhouh Was Drugged and Then Suffocated”
We have been following the growing threat to free speech in the West through blasphemy and hate crime prosecutions, here. Now, Italian prosecutors in Milan have criminally charged four Google employees after a video was posted by students showing the bullying of an autistic child in late 2006.
Various sites are reporting that TV evangelist Pat Robertson is again holding forth on seismic retribution. Robertson was quoted as saying “God is even angrier with them than he is with the people of Haiti” — which would explain the greater seismological magnitude in the 8.8 earthquake. The reason: what Chileans did to poor General Augusto Pinochet. Update: our earlier stated suspicions were confirmed and the author admits that the story was untrue.
Continue reading “Hoax: Pat Robertson Did Not Attribute Chilean Earthquake to God’s Punishment for The Mistreatment of Augusto Pinochet”
When Glenn Richardson stepped down as speaker of the Georgia House in a sex scandal with a lobbyist, it was widely denounced as another politician who ran on “family-values” while living la vida loca. Voters of Paulding Country, however, quickly replaced him with another Republican running on family values, Rep. Daniel Stout. Stout, however, may be a bit too close to family: he was divorced in 10 years ago after his wife accused him of having an affair with her mother while she was pregnant with his child.
Danish daily Politiken has issued a perfectly bizarre apology for reproducing the controversial cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed in 2008. The newspaper reached an agreement with eight Muslim organizations to apologize without expressing regret.
Continue reading “We Apologize But Have No Regrets: Danish Newspaper Reaches Agreement With Muslim Groups Over Mohammed Cartoons”