Academic Bias Strikes Again

Don't miss this piece by Joel Mowbray in the Washington Examiner:

In academia today, "academic freedom" protects those who compare the 9/11 victims to Nazi higher ups, but it does not cover a professor with the temerity to challenge the beliefs of Muslim students in a single encounter which constituted, in the words of his boss, an "assault on their dignity."

That's the story of Thomas Klocek, a part-time adjunct professor at DePaul University, who happened to be on the wrong side of the political correctness fence.

With no current income and facing the possibility of losing the health insurance he desperately needs for a serious kidney condition, he has decided to go public with his fight. ...

Read the rest at the link. Hat tip: LiberalHawks.

Random Page Titles

You, too, can create random page titles. (If I can do it, anybody can.) Just follow these simple instructions.

Credits: Melissa Etheridge, The Indigo Girls, Sheryl Crow, Juliet Wyers, Joan Armatrading, Cris Williamson, Kirtana, k.d. lang.

Update

I'm nearing the end of the semester for my Physics class - the final's Thursday of next week. Blogging will be intermittent through then, while I enhance my understanding of capacitance, inductance, and ferromagnetism. (How many angels can dance in the enclosed area of an inducting coil ... ?)

Browser wars. I'm trying really hard to get excited about Firefox. Yup, I know it's got all kinds of advantages from a security standpoint. And I'll probably appreciate it better after I get finished transferring all my 250+ bookmarks over from Safari - as far as I can tell, there's no way to import them en masse. Functionally, I don't know that I see that much difference: I like that all the formatting buttons work in Firefox, but I generally get along fine with a clipboard full of blank tags. Then again, I'm still quite fond of the AOL for Windows browser - every time I blog from my PC, I find myself thinking, "Dang! This is easy!" And I get tired of those messages that say "Safari Can't Find the Server with Both Hands and a Hunting Dog." (I think Mac is a good product, but I've never shared the unreserved admiration for it that Apple cultists possess.) Now if AOL could only add some drop-down toolbar menus like Safari and FF.

Who comes up with those ads for LowerMyBills.com? Do they actually believe they're going to get business that way? The long pig swarming with flies is bad enough. But the gingerbread man giving a sperm sample is really more than I can take.

Phone Records Corroborate Armanious Suspect's Confession

... and hair and fiber samples may substantiate it further, according to this article by Tom Troncone at NorthJersey.com.

Records of a telephone call between the two men charged in the slaying of an Egyptian family corroborate a detailed admission by one of them, authorities said Monday. The confession by Edward McDonald and records of his phone call to former prison buddy Hamilton Sanchez in the hours before the killings were enough for prosecutors to charge Sanchez in the Jan. 11 massacre, authorities said. Prosecutors are still counting on evidence being processed at the FBI forensics lab in Washington to cement their case. Hair and fiber samples taken from inside the home Hossam Armanious shared with his wife and two daughters should place the two alleged killers there, said John Conway, an FBI spokesman. "Confessions are always great," Conway said. "But confessions aren't always enough to get a conviction. We do have physical evidence and a high level of confidence that the physical evidence will help link them together."

Read the whole article at the link for details of how Edward McDonald and Hamilton Sanchez allegedly plotted the robbery to repay a debt owed to an unnamed party in New York.

Dreams Into Lightning will post any further significant developments on the Armanious-Garas murders. At this point, however, it appears unlikely that any new information will change the emerging picture of the crime, which appears to have been a common robbery with an uncommonly horrible ending.

Boom!

I am reliably informed that Mount Saint Helens has erupted. I'll keep you posted with the latest from Herculaneum.

UPDATE: KIRO-TV News reports: 'A large plume of steam is being emitted this afternoon from the crater of Mount Saint Helens. The plume was accompanied by an earthquake of about 2-point-zero magnitude. ...' Read the story at the link.

UPDATE 2: Photos here. Hat tip: LGF.

Campus Lesbians Fail "Model Minority" Test ...

... according to Gay Patriot.

Sissy on Drum's "Slime Artists"

Sissy Willis discovers another endearing term for bloggers on reading Kevin Drum. I can't add much to what she says, because she says it beautifully, but I'll just point out the partisan focus of Drum's piece. Bloggers "campaigning against the established media" ... well, Sisu is right, that IS shocking. What's interesting to me is that the media (here and elsewhere) almost always identify anti-MSM blogs (or any they don't happen to agree with) as "right-wing" or "conservative". That is, they identify "right-wing" with "anti-media". Is this, then, an implicit admission of their own leftist bias?

Judith Attends Columbia Conference on Anti-Semitism

Judith of Kesher talk attended a conference on anti-Semitism held at Columbia University. She blogs about it here. Check out her links, too.

"The concept of self-help is prevalent in conservative thought."

LaShawn Barber has an excellent post on black conservatives. Well worth your reading time.

Chris Hedges, Alleged Khafji Correspondent, Gets a History Lesson

The anti-American New York Times journalist Chris Hedges, who claimed to have been present at the battle of Khafji during Operation Desert Storm, is the subject of this open letter by Benjamin Blatt:

Having just finished War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning; I must say that Chris Hedges provides a good read, if you enjoy fiction. In particular Chris, I found your tale of the Battle of Khafji during Desert Storm on page 23 of your book to be particularly entertaining, seeing as how it is spun of whole cloth. Sadly, although your version of events in 2002 has you standing “on rooftops with young Marine radio operators who called in air strikes” watching the Marines who “were called in to push the Iraqis (out of Khafji),” your story just does not pan out. You see, in 2004 a book that may very well become known as the definitive study of Khafji was published. The author of Storm on the Horizon, David J. Morris, researched the battle extensively and interviewed the Marines (all thirteen of them) who had called in the air strikes. And yet, none of those Marines remembered you, the French photographers who were with you, or circumstances in which the presence of Journalists by their positions wouldn’t have gotten them killed. Did you really think that the story would never come out? That carrying on the grand tradition of those who covered Vietnam from the Caravelle’s bar would drown out the voices of the Marines whose story you have dishonored with your lies? But please, don’t take my word alone, let the evidence speak for itself.

In the past Mr. Hedges, you have crowed loudly about having fled the Pentagon’s Gulf War press pool, choosing instead to cover a shooting war on your own. But even though in Morris’s book there is a brief mention of the presence of “Unilateral” or “Pool breaker” journalists being around the area of Khafji during the battle, these journalists are mentioned as being British and French, and no mention is made of them having interacted with the two trapped and hidden Marine recon teams in Khafji. But I’m sure the presence of these journalists provided you excellent cover when you started to make your claims years later. ...

Read the whole thing at the link. Hat tip: Little Green Footballs.

Credit Where Overdue

Or, "A Day Late and a Dollar Short." The following brief mentions will be much shorter than the respective parties deserve, only because they're already so late that I don't want to delay any longer in getting them posted. So, here goes ...

Stefania turns 23. Stefania LaPenna, the brain behind Free Thoughts, celebrated her twenty-third birthday yesterday, March 7. Happy birthday, Stefania! Readers, be sure to check Free Thoughts regularly for updates on Giuliana Sgrena and other Italian hostages - as well as info on freedom movements in Iran, Syria, Cuba, and elsewhere.

Michael J. Totten has returned from Puerto Rico (and before you ask, no, his visa didn't expire) with lots of photos. Back home in sunny Portland, he writes on Syria and disovers a great new Syrian blog by Ammar Abdulhamid (Amarji).

Bear Left is back and blogging again, after a nasty bout of carpal tunnel. Even with those wrist supports, though, he's maintaining a healthy caution about overdosing on the electronic media.

The Redhunter is a frequent visitor and commenter here. Tom has posted on United Nations scandals and Iraqi atrocities. He also has an impressive series on "Just War" theory - the latest installment is here.

Condolences go out to Husayn and to the family of his cousin, who was killed in a recent terrorist attack. Take a moment to hit Husayn's tip jar to help out the family.

Sgrena's car, riddled with 300 to 400 bullets.

Photos at Little Green Footballs.