Mock the Vote: Why did Jon Stewart include Ysaf Islam?

Yusaf Islam, the man previously know as Cat Stevens, played Peace Train at Jon Stewart's "Rally to Restore Sanity". Doesn't Stewart realize that for devout Muslims the only real peace is submission to Allah, so when Yusaf Islam sings Peace Train it may mean the conversion of all to Islam? Maybe Stewart believes Yusaf Islam was merely making a bad joke when he said he would been interested in going to see Salman Rushdie beaten by a mob:



I guess it must be funny to a certain kind of person ... future suicide bombers, maybe?

Hat Tip John Nolte at Big Hollywood

Scotland: Criticizing Public Gay Sex Now a Hate Crime

Police in Scotland have been ordered to stop any verbal taunting directed at people engaging in public sex.

An extraordinary new Hate Crime Guidance Manual has been handed to officers telling them to arrest anyone suspected of committing a hate crime against those engaged in ‘dogging’.

Although it notes that outdoor sex can have an ‘impact on the quality of life of people using these locations for leisure pursuits’ - for example dog walkers and tourists - the rights of those cottaging, cruising or dogging must be taken into account by officers.
It states that even though ‘outdoor sex is unlawful’, people who take part in it still have rights which protect them from becoming victims of hate crime.

The manual, issued by the Association of Chief Police Officers of Scotland last week, states that people who take part in open-air sex are ‘more susceptible to hate crime’ and can suffer ‘post traumatic stress and depression’ if they are abused, Police Review revealed.

Read it all in the Daily Mail.

Hat Tip Nicky Goomba

"One Nation" Rally Trashes the Mall

"One Nation" sounds very public spirited. But their actions prove they do not take responsibility for their own behavior. We can judge a group by the trash they leave behind. People who are truly public spirited clean up their own trash. And if someone makes a mistake and litters, than those who follow will pick it up.



I noticed recyclable cans and lots of recyclable paper. These are not people who care about the environment.

These are freeloaders.

And guess what? These are people from organizations that want to "spread the wealth". Hmmm.

GZ Mosque Design Has Visitors Walking on Stars of David

The developers of the Ground Zero Mosque have released three architects images of the planned building. The design seems to be using the Star of David, a widely recognized symbol to represent the Jewish people and central element in the Israeli flag, as a design element. Notice how people will be walking on the Star of David. Click on the third image to get a close up.

I think this is a sign of disrespect. Would Muslims be comfortable walking on symbols of their own religion?

And now for a little rap music

US Soldier Tells Al Jazeera TV of US Army Hate Campaign Against Islam

I'm surprised that military personnel have the right to do this. But even if they do, isn't what he told Al Jazeera here going to contribute to creating a climate of hate toward the USA in the Muslim world? Even if he had the right, why didn't the US Secretary of State, etc try to dissuade him against doing this, as they did the Quran burning in Florida?

He even claimed the opposition to the Ground Zero Mosque was opposing his right to build it. This is deliberately directed towards the Muslim world since the medium is Al Jazeera TV and the message is inflammatory. Imam Rauf said that the Ground Zero Mosque is potentially a bigger issue in the Muslim world than the Danish cartoons, and that Muslim people could explode with anger. (Rauf's language was avoidant, "anger could explode in the Muslim world", but we know that means Muslims could explode with anger.) Now we see this US soldier deliberately stoking that anger.

The Al Jazeera moderator pointed out to Klawonn that there is a mosque at the Pentagon and that the U.S. military presents itself as open to minorities and those who "suffer" in American society. Klawonn responded that his training in the U.S. Army was "propaganda against Islam."
"I think there’s a pretty big misconception of the reality of what’s going on in the military and what the mainstream media says," said Klawonn. "The reality is that there is a sense of Islamophobia and there is a big misunderstanding of the Islamic faith and that contributes to people’s negative notions coming into the military. Also the training we get and the information we are subject to constitutes propaganda against Islam.
"Unfortunately we are going through this right now,” said Klawonn. “I think this speaks volumes about us as a society right now. I mean, as an American citizen and a service member I see the opposition of American citizens to my right to build an Islamic community center near Ground Zero as a big slap in my face as a service member."

More at CNS News

Hat Tip: The Two Malcontents

Another Successful Fatwa -- Molly Norris Disappeared

The cartoonist from Seattle who created and published a cartoon poster suggesting an Everyone Draw Mohammed Day , Molly Norris, has disappeared herself so no one else can. Remember she retracted the idea after receiving death threats? Now she has changed her name and no longer exists as her previous identity on the advice of the FBI. The Seattle Weekly announced it like this:

The gifted artist is alive and well, thankfully. But on the insistence of top security specialists at the FBI, she is, as they put it, "going ghost": moving, changing her name, and essentially wiping away her identity. She will no longer be publishing cartoons in our paper or in City Arts magazine, where she has been a regular contributor. She is, in effect, being put into a witness-protection program--except, as she notes, without the government picking up the tab.

Sounds to me like she and those top security specialists at the FBI are Islamophobic.

Hat Tip: Jihad Watch

Why Americans have grown more suspicious of American Muslims

I want to show some of what we have been presented since the previous anniversary of 9/11 in terms of American Muslims who turn out to be secret terrorists:

September 2009 -- just days after the anniversary of 9/11 Najibullah Zazi a resident of Colorado was arrested along with two of his high school classmates from Queens, his father, his uncle, and an imam from Queens, New York, on charges related to a plan to detonate backpack bombs on the New York subway system, similar tothe July 2005 London Subway Bombing.

September 2009 --- Michael Finton, a US citizen who had converted to Islam was arrested for the attempted bombing of the Federal Building in Springfield Illinois. He thought he was working with Al Qaeda, but his accomplice was an FBI agent. At the same time the FBI also arrested Hosam Maher Husein Smadi, an illegal immigrant from Jordan who attempted to kill as many people as he could with what he thought was a car bomb in the basement of the 60 story building Fountain Place in downtown Dallas. ABC News reports FBI Stings Are Chilling Evidence of Homegrown Terror

November 2009 NY Times A Terror Suspect With Feet in East and West, about David Headley, an American citizen with an American mother and a Pakistani father who was involved in the gruesome and sadistic Islamic terrorist Mumbai Massacre.

November 2009 -- Nidal Malik Hasan, American born of Palestinian descent, a US Army Major, who committed 13 murders and attempted 32 more in the Ft. Hood Massacre. See the presentation he made on The Koranic World View as it Relates to Muslims in the US Military.

December 2009 --- 5 young men, Umer Farooq, Ramy Zamzam, Ahmed Abdullah Minni, Waqar Khan and Aman Hassan Yasir, all US citizens from the suburbs of Washington DC, are arrested for traveling to Pakistan to join the Taliban and al Qaeda to fight American troops in Afghanistan.

December 2009 --- Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab a Nigerian man who had studied engineering and finance in London and headed the student Islamic Society there attempted to blow up an airplane flying to Detroit on Christmas Day. The Sunday Times Online article Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab: one boy’s journey to jihad details how he went to Yemen and met up with the American Anwar al-Awliki and Al-Qaeda where he is believed to have received the bomb materials and training.

January 2010 NY Times Magazine article exploring how an American became The Jihadist Next Door. Abu Mansoor Al-Amriki a man raised in Alabama with a white Christian (Southern Baptist) mother and a father who immigrated from Syria who now leads a group of Islamic fighters in Somalia supporting the destruction of Sufi shrines and the imposition of brutal Islamic law.

March 2010 --- An American citizen who had worked at five different nuclear power plants in the US, Sharif Mobley, is arrested in Yemen with ten other suspected Al Qaeda members.

March 2010 --- We learned that an American woman from the Philadelphia suburbs, Colleen LaRose had been arrested the previous fall as a terrorist recruiter and had been involved in a scheme to kill the Danish cartoonist Lars Vilks. The New York Times quoted the the United States attorney for Eastern Pennsylvania, Michael L. Levy, that "the case illustrated how terrorists were looking for American recruits who could blend in." Another American woman who had been recruited by LaRose was also arrested, Jamie Paulin-Ramirez of Colorado.

May 2010 NY Times article titled Imam’s Path From Condemning Terror to Preaching Jihad exploring how a man born and educated in America, Anwar Al-Awliki went from being presented by the MSM as a moderate Muslim to revealing himself to be a radical jihadist. Al_Awliki's preaching was an inspiration to both the Ft Hood Shooter and the Christmas Day Bomber.

May 2010 -- Faisal Shazad, an American citizen born in Pakistan was trained and financed by the Pakistani Taliban in his attempt to Bomb Times Square in New York. Politicians and the media initially suggested: 1) the bombing was not Islamic terrorism and 2) it was a one person job.

Fear of Islam is not a Phobia

Last night on TV I saw Imam Rauf tell us that if he has to move his planned mosque, there will be an explosion of violence in the Muslim countries. Does that mean Imam Rauf is Islamophobic, expressing a pathological fear of Muslims? Or is he a person particularly knowledgable about Islam and Muslims whose characterization of their expected behavior is reasonable?

And today I see that the US State Department has issued a travel advisory over fears of violent Muslim reactions to the planned burning of some Qurans by a small church in Florida:

The Department of State is issuing this Travel Alert to caution U.S. citizens of the potential for anti-U.S. demonstrations in many countries in response to stated plans by a church in Florida to burn Qur'ans on the anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Demonstrations, some violent, have already taken place in several countries, including Afghanistan and Indonesia, in response to media reports of the church's plans. The potential for further protests and demonstrations, some of which may turn violent, remains high. We urge you to pay attention to local reaction to the situation, and to avoid areas where demonstrations may take place. This Travel Alert expires on September 30, 2010.

So, is the US State Department Islamophobic, expressing a pathological fear of Muslims? ? Or is the US State Dept. particularly knowledgable about Islam and Muslims and this anticipation of their expected behavior is reasonable?

If Americans are frightened of Muslims, I am thinking maybe it is due to actual world events and anticipated world events as expressed by Imam Rauf and the US State Dept.

In support of the US State Dept travel advisory, the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan says that if the Pastor in Florida burns Qurans, it will be received as "a declaration of war":

Claiming that burning the Koran is a part of freedom of expression is ridiculous and does not make any sense," the Islamic Action Front, the political arm of Jordan's Muslim Brotherhood, said in a statement.

"Insulting religions and holy books is a crime that provokes people. It is a declaration of war against them," it added.

I'm not supporting the idea of burning Qurans. But I do think it is a free speech issue. I wish he wouldn't do it. But the blame for any violence that results must be placed on those who react violently to a symbolic act.

This is comparable to the way women in the USA had to deal with arguments about rape. The fact that a woman dressed in a sexy way used to be used against her in rape trials in the USA. But now, in the USA, we accept that the man is responsible for his own actions. Hmmm, of course in many Muslim countries, women are still held responsible for the actions of the men. Women have to wear burkas so the men won't be aroused.

It sure seems like Muslim men have not been taught to separate their feelings from their behavior and that they are responsible for their own actions. They blame others for provoking them to violence and they blame others for provoking them sexually. It makes sense to me to be afraid of people who don't take responsibility for their own actions.

thinking about IQ and Islam

I've been wondering about people who would commit murder over cartoons or a book burning. I've been thinking that the people we are dealing with are unable to think in categories and make necessary distinctions. I remembered that there was an article in the Economist last month on infectious diseases and their possible effect on children's intellectual development. The study used IQ data from 184 countries. It occurred to me to look at the average IQ's for some of the countries provided in the study. I've selected out some and grouped them.

98 United States
99 Canada

108 Singapore
105 China
106 South Korea
105 Japan

98 France
99 Germany
100 Netherlands
101 Switzerland
102 Italy
98 Spain
97 Russia

95 Israel

90 Turkey

82 Lebanon
82 Egypt
83 Syria
83 Libya
84 Pakistan
87 Iraq
84 Iran
84 Afghanistan
86 Kuwait
84 Saudi Arabia
84 United Arab Emirates
85 Yemen
84 Morocco
84 Jordan

Moderate Islam? 75% of Muslims Want Sharia Law

There is a great article posted at Big Peace today exploring the op/ed in last Saturday's Wall street Journal Islam is Not Islamism. The must see chart in the article is this one from a 2007 study of Muslim opinion by researchers at the University of Maryland

Looking through the study, I found on page 16 that 20% or less of the Muslims in the four countries polled had a negative opinion of Bin Laden.

What US soldiers see in Afghanistan -- rampant sexual abuse of boys.

The San Francisco Chronicle ran an article his Sunday by Joel Brinkley on the study by social scientist AnnaMaria Cardinalli on man-boy love in Afghanistan. The military commissioned this study because soldiers were disturbed to see Afghan men trying to "touch and fondle" boys.

For centuries, Afghan men have taken boys, roughly 9 to 15 years old, as lovers. Some research suggests that half the Pashtun tribal members in Kandahar and other southern towns are bacha baz, the term for an older man with a boy lover. Literally it means "boy player." The men like to boast about it.

"Having a boy has become a custom for us," Enayatullah, a 42-year-old in Baghlan province, told a Reuters reporter. "Whoever wants to show off should have a boy."

Baghlan province is in the northeast, but Afghans say pedophilia is most prevalent among Pashtun men in the south. The Pashtun are Afghanistan's most important tribe. For centuries, the nation's leaders have been Pashtun.

Cardinelli's study explains that this is the culture, but she is not a cultural relativist:

"There's no issue more horrifying and more deserving of our attention than this," Cardinalli said. "I'm continually haunted by what I saw."

The article says the source of the problem is Islamic law, because men are forbidden to see women and told that women are unclean:

Sociologists and anthropologists say the problem results from perverse interpretation of Islamic law. Women are simply unapproachable. Afghan men cannot talk to an unrelated woman until after proposing marriage. Before then, they can't even look at a woman, except perhaps her feet. Otherwise she is covered, head to ankle.

and

Fundamentalist imams, exaggerating a biblical passage on menstruation, teach that women are "unclean" and therefore distasteful. One married man even asked Cardinalli's team "how his wife could become pregnant," her report said. When that was explained, he "reacted with disgust" and asked, "How could one feel desire to be with a woman, who God has made unclean?"

Understanding Islam: What "Bridge Building" Means

When Imam Rauf says the goal of the Islamic Cultural Center near Ground Zero is meant to build bridges, we may naively assume he means inter faith dialogue. But he has stated to Arabic speaking audiences that he disdains interfaith dialogue. As reported at Former Muslims United, in an article titled “I do not believe in religious dialogue” Rauf wrote:

And regarding religious dialogue Abdul-Rauf stated “this phrase is
inaccurate. Religious dialogue as customary understood is a set of events with discussions in large hotels that result in nothing. Religions do not dialogue and dialogue is not present in the attitudes of the followers regardless of being Muslim or Christian. The image of Muslims in the West is complex which needs to be remedied.”

On May 25th Rauf wrote an op/ed in the New York Daily News that included this:

My colleagues and I are the anti-terrorists. We are the people who want to embolden the vast majority of Muslims who hate terrorism to stand up to the radical rhetoric. Our purpose is to interweave America's Muslim population into the mainstream society.

So to English speaking Americans he says he wants to "interweave America's Muslim population into the mainstream society", but to Arabic speakers he claims he "does not believe in religious dialogue". Is there a contradiction going on here?

Well, Rauf's father was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood andFrank Gaffney at Big Peace provides this quote to help us understand what the Muslim Brotherhood means by the phrase "bridge building".:

For example, Team Obama fails to recognize that when Rauf talks about “bridge-building,” he means it the same way as did Seyyid Qutb, one the Brotherhood’s most important ideologues. In his seminal book, Milestones, Qutb makes clear that this term does not translate into a quest for interfaith and cross-cultural harmony. Rather, it is meant to achieve the infidels’ submission: “The chasm between Islam and Jahiliyyah (unbelievers – the land of gross ignorance and disbelief) is great, and a bridge is not to be built across it so that the two sides may mix with each other, but only so that the people of Jahiliyyah may come over to Islam.”

This attitude makes sense when we accept that Muslims view Islam as the last and superior prophesy, and that conversion from Islam is viewed so unfavorably that it is punished by death.

Which reminds of another quote from Imam Rauf's NY Daily News op/ed:

Freedom of religion is something we hold dear. It is the core of what America is all about, and it is what people worldwide respect about our country. The Koran itself says compulsion in religion is wrong.

But Rauf refuses to sign Former Muslims United's Freedom Pledge:

I renounce, repudiate and oppose any physical intimidation, or worldly and corporal punishment, of apostates from Islam, in whatever way that punishment may be determined or carried out by myself or any other Muslim including the family of the apostate, community, Mosque leaders, Shariah court or judge, and Muslim government or regime.

Courage and the Ground Zero Mosque Debate

I I have been thinking that it takes no courage to advocate for the Ground Zero Mosque. No one is going to violently attack the politicians and media celebs who support the building. But there may be a real danger of violent attack against those who are exercising their constitutional 1st Amendment right of free speech to oppose the mosque. Have the mainstream media and so many politicians taken up the Muslim Brotherhood talking points and sought to silence this debate because that is the safe thing to do in the short run?

It is the elephant in the living room. No one is talking about it. But the symbolism of Ground Zero to me is that we are vulnerable to attack by people who hate us. The attack on the World Trade Towers was the midpoint of a more than twenty year era of fear of radical Islam.

I pulled out Christopher Hitchens piece about the twenty year anniversary of the Fatwa against Salman Rushdie. Hitchens says the violent threats have done there job and there is now a pervasive climate of self-censorship in the media. We know these are not just threats, the violence is real, as we saw in the Danish cartoon controversy. And he says that we use the "guise of good manners and multiculturalism" to hide that we are actually caving in to the threat of violence and failing to support the true moderate Muslims.

Sometimes this fear—and this blackmail—comes dressed up in the guise of good manners and multiculturalism. One must not wound the religious feelings of others, many of whom are poor immigrants in our own societies. To this I would respond by pointing to a book published in 1994. It is entitled For Rushdie: Essays by Arab and Muslim Writers in Defense of Free Speech. Among its contributors is almost every writer worthy of the name in the Arab and Muslim world, ranging from the Syrian poet Adonis to the Syrian-Kurdish author Salim Barakat, to the late national bard of the Palestinians, Mahmoud Darwish, to the celebrated Turkish writers Murat Belge and Orhan Pamuk. Especially impressive and courageous was the list of 127 Iranian writers, artists, and intellectuals who, from the prison house that is the Islamic Republic, signed their names to a letter which said: “We underline the intolerable character of the decree of death that the Fatwah is, and we insist on the fact that aesthetic criteria are the only proper ones for judging works of art.… To the extent that the systematic denial of the rights of man in Iran is tolerated, this can only further encourage the export outside the Islamic Republic of its terroristic methods which destroy freedom.” In other words, the situation is the exact reverse of what the condescending multiculturalists say it is. To indulge the idea of religious censorship by the threat of violence is to insult and undermine precisely those in the Muslim world who are its intellectual cream, and who want to testify for their own liberty—and for ours. It is also to make the patronizing assumption that the leaders of mobs and the inciters of goons are the authentic representatives of Muslim opinion. What could be more “offensive” than that?

Andrew McCarthy has a piece in National Review Online today that discusses the difference between the fake moderate Muslims supported by the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas versus the true moderate Muslims that are threatened by the the Islamists like the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas who will use violence to impose their will.

It doesn't take courage to kowtow to those who threaten violence. It does take courage to speak up against them. McCarthy says Imam Rauf and the Ground Zero Mosque are on the side of the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas. Why doesn't the MSM research this it? Or do they know but are to afraid to say?

Is Rauf a moderate Muslim when it comes to Sharia Law?

Imam Feisal Rauf, the Muslim leader planning to build an Islamic cultural center with mosque two blocks from the site of the destruction of the World Trade Center by Islamic militants, also heads the Shariah Index Project, an ongoing evaluate the Sharia compliance of the nations. Rauf has said to US audiences that the USA is a Sharia compliant state.



And another muslim was recently quoted in the New York Times saying that Sharia is compatible with the US Constitution:

Camie Ayash, a spokeswoman for the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro, lamented that people were listening to what she called “total disinformation” on Islam.

She said her group was stunned when what began as one person raising zoning questions about the new mosque evolved into mass protests with marchers waving signs about Shariah.

“A lot of Muslims came to the U.S. because they respect the Constitution,” she said. “There’s no conflict with the U.S. Constitution in Shariah law. If there were, Muslims wouldn’t be living here.”

When I read that, I wondered if this was a Muslim "Talking Point" now and how the reporter could print it without asking some basic questions about obvious conflicts between the U.S. Constitution and Sharia Law.

Let's look at Rauf's presentation of Sharia Law at a meeting of the Shariah Index Project in Malaysia to see how the two are irreconcilable. As the reporter summarized Rauf's presentation:

The pillars of Shariah are based on five – some say six sacrosanct rights and principles. Breaching any of them is considered a major sin that requires punishment.

The most important is the protection and furthering of life.

Then there is the protection of religion – which includes all three Abrahamic faiths and, through most of Islamic history, other religions as well. It was this principle that the Muslim world evoked during the controversy over cartoons lampooning the Prophet that were published in a Danish newspaper. The same principle prohibits Muslims from satirising elements of any religion.

In the video, Rauf said that Sharia provides the "right to freedom of religion". That's not the same as "protection of religion". It is in direct conflict with the US Constitution's 1st Amendment protect of speech and of the press. We have seen how Muslims have silenced free speech in our own country through threats of violence as the country has begun to self-censor.

Another pillar is the protection of dignity and honour, which can be used as a basis for punishing slander, which recently became a crime in the UAE under the country’s new media law. The same principle is behind UAE cases where drivers have been prosecuted for making rude gestures at other road users, who took it as an insult to their dignity. Similarly, a woman can sue a man, even a stranger, for a lewd or inappropriate comment that “undermines her honour”.

What he doesn't say is how this is used to punish those who are raped and seeking help. If the rape charge cannot be proved, then the one making the accusation is punished for slander. And it is very hard to prove rape when the Quran requires four witnesses. Here is an example I posted a while ago about a student in Saudi Arabia who said his school principal raped him.

Protection of lineage, another pillar of Shariah, is the basis for criminalising adultery and, as was decided by muftis in Dubai last year, for banning IVF.

And remember, the Quran provides for the death penalty for adultery.

Protection of the mind or intellect includes the protection of sobriety, the basis for prohibiting Muslims from drinking alcohol or using any mind-altering substance, except under a doctor’s orders.

The final pillar of Shariah is the protection of property, an element that many scholars say contributed to the economic growth of early Muslim states.

Rauf says in the video that Sharia is the "fulfillment of five fundamental rights: "the right to life, the right to freedom of religion, the right to family, the right to property and the right to mental well being." But as the punishments from the Quran are applied in Sharia Law:

The right to freedom of religion means the death penalty for criticism of religion.
The right to family means the death penalty for adultery.
(I'm not seeing the right to life in this.)
The right to property means cutting off the hands of thieves.
The right to mental wellbeing means lashing those who drink alcohol.

What is a moderate Muslim when it comes to Sharia Law? Isn't Rauf just talking up a good game for us when he knows the Quran requires these punishments? It reminds me of the story of the Muslim man who convinced a Jewish alcoholic to convert to Islam.

And what good is the US Constitution's 8th Amendment prohibiting cruel and unusual punishment when this is the usual punishment and Allah is merciful? (So if you are going to be lashed for drinking alcohol and even question the punishment as cruel, are you insulting religion and insulting Allah, so now you get the death penalty?)

8% of US Babies Born to Illegal Immigrants

The Wall Street Journal has a front page article on the new report from the Pew Hispanic Center on the children of illegal immigrants:

One in 12 babies born in the U.S. in 2008 were offspring of illegal immigrants, according to a new study, an estimate that could inflame the debate over birthright citizenship.

Undocumented immigrants make up slightly more than 4% of the U.S. adult population. However, their babies represented twice that share, or 8%, of all births on U.S. soil in 2008, according to the nonpartisan Pew Hispanic Center's report.

This is a large number and will certainly figure into the public discussion of the 14th Amendment and "anchor babies". The report does note that over 80% of the mothers had been in the US over a year. So, that makes about 20% of the 8% first time "anchor babies". I calculate that as over 1% of US births in 2008 were clearly "anchor baby" phenomena.

I noticed the Wall Street Journal article and the Pew report, Unauthorized Immigrants and Their US-Born Children, assume the 14th Amendment guarantees citizenship to the children of illegal immigrants who are born in the US and that a revision to the constitution is necessary to deny birthright citizenship to the children of illegal aliens. But I thought that was an open question since the 14th Amendment includes the language "subject to the jurisdiction thereof".

Should judge have recused himself in Prop 8 case?

There is an interesting argument presented in today's San Francisco Chronicle that the federal judge, Vaughn Walker, should have recused himself in the the Prop 8 (California same-sex marriage) case. John C. Eastman, a law professor and former dean of Chapman University School of Law argues that the fact that Walker is gay is not reason enough for him to recuse himself, However, it has been reported that Walker is in a same-sex relationship and that would put Walker in the position of materially benefiting from his own ruling. Eastman concludes:

If the relationship does not create such a conflict, it nevertheless creates the circumstance "in which the judge's impartiality might reasonably be questioned." That ground for disqualification can be waived by the parties, but the judge must "disclose on the record the basis of the disqualification" and then only continue after the parties have agreed in writing to his continued involvement. No such disclosure and agreement occurred in this case.

Judge Walker's failure to disqualify himself or at least to disclose his potentially disqualifying relationship to the parties requires that the opinion in the case be vacated and a new trial conducted before a different judge. In Liljeberg vs. Health Services Acquisition Corp., the Supreme Court held that the original judgment had to be set aside even when the disqualifying relationship only became known to the parties 10 months after the judgment entered in the case had been upheld on appeal. Where an objective observer would have questioned the judge's impartiality, recusal is required, and the appropriate remedy is to annul the judgment because of the risk of injustice to the parties and of undermining the public's confidence in the judicial process.

The Huffington Post has listed two other cases in which Walker ruled against religious objections to the promotion of gay sexual behavior:

In 1999, he rejected arguments from the parents of a San Leandro boy who claimed their religious rights were violated by pro-gay comments their son's teacher had made in the classroom.

In the other case, he dismissed a free speech claim by two Oakland city employees whose managers had confiscated a bulletin board flier for a religious group that promoted "natural family, marriage and family values." The city had "significant interests in restricting discriminatory speech about homosexuals," Walker wrote in his 2005 ruling.

Matthew J. Franck on the Prop 8 Ruling

I think Matthew J. Franck has a helpful analysis of Judge Walker's legal reasoning in the California same-sex marriage case. He explains how Walker took the movement towards the equality of the sexes in marriage to mean that gender no longer mattered:

By the same token, says Judge Walker, the doctrine of coverture, in the common law, in which a wife's legal identity was subsumed by that of her husband as the superior partner in the marriage-that too has been abandoned by a more modern understanding of the sexes as equal partners. Thus, concludes the judge, there has been a "movement of marriage away from a gendered institution and toward an institution free from state-mandated gender roles." And this has not been an essential change in the "core" of the marriage institution, but merely a shedding of an extraneous characteristic, thanks to "an evolution in the understanding of gender."

And now watch carefully, for here the fallacious reasoning enters the equation. When "the genders" are no longer "seen as having distinct roles," it is revealed that at marriage's "core" there is ample space for same-sex couples too. Since "gender no longer forms an essential part of marriage," indeed since it never really did, "plaintiffs' relationships are consistent with the core of the history, tradition and practice of marriage in the United States." There, you see? There is something eminently conservative about the admission of same-sex couples to the marital bond. What could we have been thinking, denying them this right for all these centuries?

Judge Walker seems to have committed the fallacy of composition-taking something true of a part and concluding that it is also true of the whole of which it is a part. If it is true that "gender" no longer matters as it once did in the relation of husband and wife, he reasons, therefore it no longer matters whether the relation is one of husband and wife; it may as well be a relation of husband and husband or of wife and wife, since we now know that marriage is not, at its "core," a "gendered institution." But restated in this way, it is quite plain that the judge's conclusion doesn't follow from his premises. To say that the status of men and women in marriage is one of equal partners is not to say that men and women are the same, such that it does not matter what sex their partners are. The equalization of status is not the obliteration of difference, as much as Judge Walker would like to pretend it is.

Read it all here.

The problem with relying on speech writers and teleprompters

Whoever wrote the speech for the White House Correspondents Dinner knew who Snooki was.

Is the problem relying on speech writers and teleprompters or is trying to go with out them on The View?