Ernest J. Pagels is a politician who is not just satisfied with balancing the budget. He is campaigning on a promise to “outlaw” homosexuality as well as abortion and pornography. You may think he is running for Kandahar city council on the Taliban ticket, but he is one of the candidates vying for the GOP slot to challenge Russ Feingold in the Senate.
Category: Society
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is struggling for reelection this year and his friends have lined up to help him. This week, Nevadans saw a series of glossy, high-priced ads for Reid paid for by his friends in the pharmaceutical industry. Reid fought to include huge benefits for drug companies in the health care bill and now the industry is running ads touting his work for “Nevada families.”
Continue reading “Just Say Yes To Drugs: Drug Lobby Pumps Money and Ads Into Nevada Race for Reid”
Two prominent art curators in Moscow, Yury Samodurov and Andrei Yerofeyev, are facing three years in prison for showing art that insulted the Russian Orthodox Church. It is the latest example of blasphemy prosecutions, a growing trend in the West and industrialized nations.
Continue reading “Criminalizing Art: Two Prominent Art Curators Face Three Years in Jail for Offending Orthodox Church”
Police in Waterbury, Connecticut have arrested Rev. Kevin J. Gray, 64, of Sacred Heart parish for allegedly not just stealing $1.3 million from the church coffers but spending it on male escorts, hotels, and even tuition at Harvard for a male friend. He reportedly told police that he “had grown to hate being a priest” and tired of having “to fix problems made by the previous priests.” Well, now others will be fixing his little problem.
Below is today’s USA Today column on the arrest of individuals for telling obvious jokes on airplanes and at airports.
Continue reading “Airlines Should Go After Hoaxers, Not Jokesters”
What do you do when you hand over all your money before a promised Doomsday, but Doomsday never comes? You go find the next best thing: a lawyer. That is the situation in Australia where a court has frozen the assets of Pastor Rocco Leo and his associates at Agape Ministries after followers demanded their money back. While there appears to have been no written contract, this appears a novel inverse of a force majeure claim: the act of God never came.
Continue reading “Followers Sue Church After Doomsday Fails To Come”
Picture this scene out of Midnight Express, police surrounding a nervous man late at night on an airport tarmac. Pulling away his shirt, they find taped to his body . . . steaks. A beef mule. That could be the scene in Karnataka, India where the government is about to make the possession of beef a criminal offense. Presumably, possession of beef with intent to distribute will receive a higher sentence.
Continue reading “Do The Prime, Do The Time: India Legislators Move To Criminalize Beef Possession”
A group of 15 monkeys at Kyoto University’s primate research institute escaped from a high-security research center by learning how to use tree limbs to catapult themselves over a 17ft high electric fence. One of them was named Dr. Zaius. Ok, I made that last part up but it is clear that our monkey overlords are gathering.
First there was the scandal in the hot dog eating world. Now, scandal rocks the Sumo world. Is nothing sacred? Sumo star Ozeki Kotomitsuki, 34, has been implicated in a gambling scandal and has been dismissed by the Japan Sumo Association.
Continue reading “Say It Ain’t So, Oze: Scandal Rocks Sumo World”
The Obama Administration filed a challenge of the Arizona immigration law in a move that comes with great legal and political risks. As noted in a recent column, the Arizona law remains quite popular around the country and the Administration will be in the unenviable position of arguing that increased enforcement conflicts with its own policies. Legally, the Justice Department will have to make out a case for implied preemption.
Continue reading “Obama Administration Challenges Arizona Law”
Now you can finally have hair like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The Iranian government has released the results of a list of acceptable and banned hair styles for men.
College lecturer TJ Joseph was attacked on a roadside in India by Muslim extremists who stabbed him and cut off his hand for insulting Mohammed in a question for a class paper.
Continue reading “Publish and Perish: Muslim Extremists Chop Off Hand of Professor For Blasphemy in Class Question”
The Economist has admitted that it substantially edited its widely viewed cover picture of Obama. President Obama has been criticized for what is perceived as his detached reaction to the spill for the first few weeks. The cover page showed a solitary Obama in deep contemplation. It was completely manufactured. Not only was Obama not alone in the picture, he was talking to Thad W. Allen of the Coast Guard and Charlotte Randolph, a local parish president. Indeed, his bent figure is not from deep contemplation but apparently listening to the much shorter Randolph.
Continue reading “The Economist Under Fire Over Editing of Obama Photo”
Vice President Joe Biden was in Baghdad this week to praise the success of the U.S and Iraqi forces in the battle with the Taliban. His speech was delayed in part by the mortar attack on the U.S. embassy compound.
Continue reading “Biden: We Are Winning . . . Now Everyone To the Bomb Shelter”
Professor Karol Sikora describes the situation as a bit “embarrassing.” Sikora was hired by the Libyan government to find that terrorist Abdelbaset Ali Mohmet al-Megrahi had less than three months to live. While other doctors refused to make such a finding, Sikora did so. The Scottish government decided to release Megrahi, 58 — the only person convicted of the 1988 bombing of a US Pan Am jumbo jet over Lockerbie killing 270 people. He was released on compassionate grounds in August 2009.
Continue reading “Doctor Who Found Pan Am Bomber To Have Less Than Three Months To Live Now Says He Could Live Another 10 Years”