Why is there no spring training in moot court?

Or debate? Pro baseball teams have no more reason to head down to Florida or Arizona to work off their rust than we do. Gotta talk to Edmunds about this. As for who I should talk to about getting White Guy History And Various Male Diseases Awareness month up and running, I'm open to suggestions. OK, maybe not White Guy History month (every month is White Guy History Month) but when's the last time you saw any ribbons for Prostate Cancer Awareness Month (it's in September, by the way)? Testicular Cancer Awareness Month has to share April with Women's Eye Health and Safety Month. What is that, anyway? We have eyes too. You don't need your own month for that.

Back to studying.

Golden Rule aside...

The Vatican today reminded Muslim nations PO'd over a cartoon of their own treatment of Christian minorities.

"If we tell our people they have no right to offend, we have to tell the others they have no right to destroy us," Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Vatican's Secretary of State (prime minister), told journalists in Rome. "We must always stress our demand for reciprocity in political contacts with authorities in Islamic countries and, even more, in cultural contacts," Foreign Minister Archbishop Giovanni Lajolo told the daily Corriere della Sera.

That's putting it mildly. If they have a right to a planet free of any material offensive to their religion, then Catholic priests have a right not to be murdered in Turkey? Let's not sell ourselves short here. Just under a year ago, forty Christians were arrested in Saudi Arabia for praying in a private home. Christians in Palestine are routinely persecuted for their beliefs. Not even their cemeteries are safe. British flight crews aren't even allowed to bring crosses or St. Christopher medals into Saudi Arabia, let alone wear them. Yet were any of these practices reflected upon in the Muslim world during the international uproar over France's law against wearing crosses or hijabs in public schools? Hardly. But Saudi Arabia's highest religious authority did declare the ban an "infringement on human rights" and assert that efforts to allow women to mix more freely with men were "satanic and dangerous" in the same breath.

It's interesting. Practically every religion in the world abides by some variation of the Golden Rule. Islam is the glaring exception.

It shows.

Tite work, Europe. Make Amadinejad right.

Europe starts peddling offensive cartoons of Muhammed under the guise of free speech just as the Austrians convict David Irving of Holocaust denial and sentence him to three years in prison. You couldn't have time this better.

Iranian President Mahmoud Amadinejad in September:

Some European countries insist on saying that Hitler killed millions of innocent Jews in furnaces and they insist on it to the extent that if anyone proves something contrary to that they condemn that person and throw them in jail. Although we don't accept this claim, if we suppose it is true, our question for the Europeans is: is the killing of innocent Jewish people by Hitler the reason for their support to the occupiers of Jerusalem? If the Europeans are honest they should give some of their provinces in Europe - like in Germany, Austria or other countries - to the Zionists and the Zionists can establish their state in Europe.

Amadenejad isn't the first anti-Semite to use Holocaust denial laws as ammo against the arguments for a Jewish state in the Middle East, but the combination of the cartoon controversy and Irving's conviction just might give this lunatic some credence he lacked before. As long as eleven European countries resort to criminalization for offenses against particular Jewish and Christian sensitivities and to claims of free speech for offenses against the Muslim variety, radicals like Amadinejad will continue to gain credibility in the Muslim world--as will their anti-Semitic rhetoric. The result is plainly self-defeating: laws against anti-Semitism in Europe raise the specter of anti-Semitism elsewhere in the world. If Europe truly believes in free speech, then it must eliminate this double standard and afford people like Irving the same protections as it would Danish cartoonists. Otherwise, claims to "free speech" ring hollow and smell of nothing more than anti-Muslim prejudice.

More thoughts on 24

The decision to cast Sean Astin as Lynn McGill on 24 was a questionable one. I just have trouble taking him seriously. Highlights from next week's episode:

Audrey: You're not suggesting that we let them release a canister of nerve gas in a crowded mall...
McGill: That's exactly what we're going to do. It's the only way we can find the terrorists and the other 19 canisters.

(Climbs on chair)

And when we find the terrorists, we're gonna attack. We're gonna go inside, we're gonna go outside, inside and outside. We're gonna get 'em on the run, boys, and once we get 'em on the run we're gonna keep 'em on the run. And then we're gonna go go go go go go and we're not gonna stop 'til we get across that goal line. This is an agency they say is....... is good. Well, I think were better than them. They can't lick us! So what do you say, men?

Buchanan: MCGILL! Are you ready champ?
McGill: I've been ready for this my whole life.
Buchanan: Then you take us out on the field.
McGill: You're the only one who ever took me seriously, Bill.

I give up. It's a Hallmark holiday.

I'm now convinced that it's a totally fake holiday. Whenever people would tell me in the past that Valentine's Day is nothing more than a plastic holiday used by Hallmark to sell cards, I'd remind them that we are actually celebrating the Feast of St. Valentine.

"What'd he do?"

Hell if I know. I seem to remember him being a Christian martyr but I couldn't tell you anything more about him than that. Still, the whole romantic aspect of the holiday led me to believe he was probably stoned while clutching a heart-shaped box of chocolates or something. There had to be some excuse for the feast turning into Cupids and paste-encrusted cards that first graders are forced to give to other kids that they don't even like.

Anyway, I'll be as romantic as anyone wants on February 15, but I think I'm done celebrating (St.) Valentine's Day. Two reasons why:

1. We don't even know who he is. Here I thought that I was just in the dark as to who Valentine was. As it turns out, the Catholic Church doesn't really know who he is either. They seem to have it narrowed down to three people (that is, if he existed at all): a Roman priest, a bishop from Interamna, or a martyr from Africa. You'd think this would be the kind of thing that the Church would nail down before making the guy a saint, but it seems that back in the late 400s, they were in the habit of naming feasts more for the purpose of overshadowing pagan holidays than honoring real people. This is one of them. Pope Hallmarkius I named February 14 the Feast of St. Valentine in response to the pagan holiday of Lupercalia and stated only that St.Valentine was a man wose name was "justly reverenced among men, but whose acts are known only to God." So basically, the Church created Valentine's Day to eliminate a holiday dediated to the Roman god of fertility only to have it turn into a godless, profit driven holiday celebrated with images of the Roman god of erotic love. Ironic, no?

2. The Catholic Church nixed the feast. After the Second Vatican Council, the Church removed feasts dedicated to saints of a purely legendary nature (along with St. George, St. Christopher, etc.). That, or Paul VI just got sick of not having a date every year. Either way, as of 1969, the Feast of St. Valentine is no longer celebrated on February 14.

Good enough for me. From now on, February 14 is Sts. Cyril and Mythodius Day in my book.

P.S. If you came upon this post because you were searching for the words "St. Valentine" and "antisemite," then I feel obliged to inform you that none of the people who may have been St. Valentine--if there was such a person--were antisemites. Heck, one was in North Africa, one was in Rome, and the other was in Interamna...we don't even know where that is, except that it was someplace in Italy. My guess is that none of them encountered a large enough number of Jews to develop an opinion of them one way or the other. Besides, if you're a Christian in the third century Roman empire, then I sincerely doubt you have enough time to persecute another religion anyway. I hope this puts to rest any fears that Catholic saints of dubious existence may have held antisemitic beliefs. Thanks.

Dick Cheney reaffirms his commitment to Second Amendment rights.

They're making this too easy. In case you haven't seen it for some reason, link here.

Omar over at Iraq the Model finally comments on the cartoon b.s.:

I swear that 90%+ of the protestors in Muslim countries have not seen the cartoons and do not know the name of the paper and when I say that I'm sure of it because I have access to the web 24/7 and I spent a really long time searching for the cartoons and couldn’t find them until a
friend emailed me a link . . . .

You know that those cartoons were published for the 1st time months ago and we here in the Middle East have tonnes of jokes about Allah, the prophets and the angels that are way more offensive, funny and obscene than those poorly-made cartoons, yet no one ever got shot for telling
one of those jokes or at least we had never seen rallies and protests against those infidel joke-tellers.

Omar makes a good point. Keep in mind who stands to gain from encouraging this fracas.

Law Prom 2006

A few of us decided to rock kilts this year.

Bryan, Claire, me, Lea, Jeff, and Katie.

Marie was there in spirit.

Who knew we had an actual Scottish guy at our law school? Good sport about the whole thing though.

Twisted. There's no other word for it.

Anyone who was in Helena last year no doubt remembers Montana's first encounter with the Westboro Baptist Church. This is a faux-Christian hate group from Kansas. It claims that (1) God hates gays, (2) God hates anyone who doesn't also hate gays, and (3) God hates America and will destroy it unless it makes sodomy a capital offense. They gained some notoriety protesting the funeral of Matthew Shepherd and terrorizing his mother with taunts that her son was in hell.

The media in and around Topeka has always made it a policy not to give this group attention, though now they've found a new means to get their hate-riddled message into the headlines: setting up demonstrations around the country the the funerals of U.S. servicemen who died while serving in Iraq. I was listening to NPR on the way home from the grocery store this evening. These people claim that the Iraq War (along with 9/11, Hurricane Katrina and Skating with Celebrities) is God's punishment of America for tolerance of homosexuals. So now they're showing up at funerals, yelling at widows that their husbands are in hell for fighting on behalf of our country. Real classy fellows. Made me sick.

But their next stunt is tomorrow. WBC plans to protest the funeral of Coretta Scott King. As we watch the Muslim world engage in violence over cartoons suggesting that their religion is violent, let's not forget that we have a few of our own crazies to deal with here.

And by the way...

I'd love to meet the guy who goes through all the trouble of drawing a Danish, Norwegian or American flag just so he can delight himself in lighting it on fire and watching it burn for ten seconds.