How about the fact that a witness says the gunman was shouting “Allahu Akbar”?

A witness named April Manlo says at 2:37:

He was running over there. And he sh — I heard a — yeah, yes, on the ground. I hear two shots, bap bap bap bap. And he’s shouting and running. “Allahu akbar.” He said: “Allahu akbar.”

Now, witnesses are sometimes mistaken, of course. The shooter has been identified as a man named Tyler Brehm, and it has been suggested that a break-up may have motivated the shooting.

But the witness was there, and the reporter wasn’t. So unless there we know for a fact that the witness was wrong — if we know why the shooter did it and it isn’t Islamic extremism — witness accounts should not be suppressed in the name of political correctness.

And we know from history that they sometimes are. We also know from the Fort Hood shooting that the L.A. Times and other news organizations squelched information that Nidal Hasan was motivated by Islamic extremism.

Is that happening again?

Thanks to an anonymous tipster.

[Guest post by DRJ]

Amnesty International’s Secretary-General has endorsed “Jihad in self-defence”:

“Amnesty International (AI) Secretary-General Claudio Cordone has come under fire for defending jihad when it occurs in “self-defence” – a position many other human rights advocates believe “would gravely undermine the future of the human rights movement.”

Cordone’s comments came in response to a February 13 “Global Petition” to AI by human-rights and women’s -rights advocates protesting the suspension of Gita Sahgal, a senior AI official in London.

Sahgal was suspended after the Sunday Times of London reported she believed Amnesty’s collaboration with former Guantanamo Bay detainee Moazzem Begg “fundamentally damages” the group’s reputation.

In a letter sent to senior AI officials, Sahgal charged that Amnesty has mistakenly aligned itself with Begg and his organization Cageprisoners, which calls itself a human-rights organization working to “raise awareness of the plight of prisoners” held in the war on terror.

According to the Sunday Times, the prisoners it championed have included “Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, and Abu Qatada, a preacher described as Osama Bin Laden’s ‘European ambassador.’ ”

Begg and Cageprisoners are also reported to have developed a relationship with Anwar al-Awlaki, the Al Qaeda cleric who endorsed the failed Christmas Day plane bombing near Detroit and who became a confidant of Nidal Malik Hasan, charged with carrying out the Nov. 5 Fort Hood massacre.”

“Everything in moderation,” including tolerance.

– DRJ

[Guest post by DRJ]

Mark Steyn is noted for his wry and informed take on many topics, especially the decline of Western civilization. Today’s installment looks at Canadian support of Islamic hate speech:

“The Jewish Defence League held a demonstration today in Toronto at Palestine House, one of the many jihadist front organizations without which no sophisticated multicultural western city is complete. Tomorrow night, for example, they’re hosting the editor of the London newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi, Abd al-Bari Atwan. Mr Atwan is a celebrity eliminationist who declared on TV that “if the Iranian missiles strike Israel, by Allah, I will go to Trafalgar Square and dance with delight.” Because Palestine House is government-funded, Mr Atwan’s appearance to share this and other insights is effectively being underwritten by Canadian taxpayers.”

Steyn concludes:

“Lenin famously said the west would “sell us the rope by which we will hang them. He was underestimating our suicidal stupidity: We’re happy to give it away.”

No one can sum up and skewer in the same sentence quite like Steyn.

– DRJ

[Guest post by DRJ]

Larimer County, Colorado, Sheriff Jim Alderden (also known as the “Balloon Boy” Sheriff) will once again celebrate Christmas with a politically incorrect Christmas tree-trimming party:

“A Yuletide-loving sheriff with a penchant for controversy today announced his “Apparently Annual Politically Incorrect Christmas Tree Trimming Party.”

Larimer County Sheriff Jim Alderden began the event in 2007 to thumb his nose at a Fort Collins task force that recommended no publicly funded holiday displays that favor a single religion. In response, Alderden put up his Christmas tree — funded with private donations — outside the county office and beyond the city’s jurisdiction.”

The celebration starts with “a prayer and the Pledge of Allegiance, followed by Christmas carols, horse and buggy rides and a visit from Santa Claus.”

– DRJ

[Guest post by DRJ]

Mark Steyn is my favorite political columnist. Today he writes about how political correctness enabled the mass murders by Major Nidal Hasan:

“Major Hasan couldn’t have been more straightforward about who and what he was. An army psychiatrist, he put “SoA”—i.e., “Soldier of Allah”—on his business card. At the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences, he was reprimanded for trying to persuade patients to convert to Islam and fellow pupils objected to his constant “anti-American propaganda,” but, as the Associated Press reported, “a fear of appearing discriminatory against a Muslim student kept officers from filing a formal written complaint.”

This is your brain on political correctness.

As the writer Barry Rubin pointed out, Major Hasan was the first mass murderer in U.S. history to give a PowerPoint presentation outlining the rationale for the crime he was about to commit. And he gave the presentation to a roomful of fellow army psychiatrists and doctors. Some of whom glanced queasily at their colleagues, but none of whom actually spoke up. And, when the question of whether then-Captain Hasan was, in fact, “psychotic,” the policy committee at Walter Reed Army Medical Center worried “how would it look if we kick out one of the few Muslim residents.

This is your brain on political correctness.”

There’s more, of course. It seems today’s political correctness is unlimited.

– DRJ

[Guest post by DRJ]

What is the point of public education? Is it to learn basic skills like the old-fashioned “3 R’s” — reading, writing, arithmetic — or is it to learn how to get along with people, to be tolerant of different backgrounds and cultures, and open to other beliefs?

That seems to be the issue in a New Hampshire case involving Amanda, a 10-year-old girl who is being home-schooled by her mother and is described as “well liked, social and interactive with her peers, academically promising and intellectually at or superior to grade level.”

However, Amanda’s divorced father and a local judge think she needs a public education — and the judge seems to think Amanda is being brainwashed by religion:

“In a court order issued in the case, the local court reasoned that the girl’s “vigorous defense of her religious beliefs to [her] counselor suggests strongly that she has not had the opportunity to seriously consider any other point of view.”

Got that? It sounds like the more articulate and vigorous Amanda is in expressing her opinions, the more the judge believes she needs public education. However, the father’s attorney says the case is about Amanda getting along with other people and not about her religion:

“Kurowski’s attorney, Elizabeth Donovan, said the ruling was based on the girl’s isolated learning environment, not on her mother’s religion. She said the girl’s home schooling consists of “sitting in the corner of her mother’s bedroom,” where she receives her lessons on a computer screen.

Kurowski “is concerned because of the isolation that is borne of that and the lack of exposure to the broader culture at large,” Donovan said. “People of different heritage, people of different culture, tolerance, group problem-solving, making friends, losing friends — all of the things that come with a public school education.”

The New Hampshire Supreme Court has agreed to hear Amanda’s case but it’s hard to view it as an anomaly given a recent story about the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities College of Education and Human Development. Through its “Race, Culture, Class, and Gender Task Group,” the College plans to enforce what F.I.R.E. calls a “political litmus test for future teachers” and students based on their predispositions, beliefs, and “cultural competence.” The educators at U-Minn believe “both academic preparation and particular dispositions or professional commitments are needed for effective teaching.”

That sounds a lot like what the New Hampshire judge thinks Amanda should be learning in school.

– DRJ

[Guest post by DRJ]

Via the Instapundit:

“WALTER REED OFFICIALS ASKED, Was Hasan Psychotic? NPR’s Daniel Zwerdling has owned this story from the beginning. And this is damning:

“Put it this way,” says one official familiar with the conversations that took place. “Everybody felt that if you were deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, you would not want Nidal Hasan in your foxhole.”

Not that they did anything to prevent someone else from finding themself in that position.”

This story is more unbelievable every day, but was it the result of a PC military or something more specific — like a PC medical-psychiatric profession?

– DRJ

[Guest post by DRJ]

California recently hosted an extravagant Women’s Conference that is all about women changing the world:

“Under the direction of First Lady Maria Shriver, last week’s conference was a two-day extravaganza, a Technicolor version of the event of old. Much of the focus was “The Shriver Report,” a collaboration between Shriver and a Washington think-tank, which declared two weeks ago that we have become “a woman’s nation.”

But the heart of the conference occurred at lunch on Day 2, when Shriver, her voice breaking, for the first time publicly reflected on her mother’s recent death. Her words brought thousands to tears in a silent arena.

It was hard to imagine the same personal scene at a conference of men. But that was part of the point, for the theme of the conference might well have been: We still want to change the world. We just want to do it on our terms.
***
In her report, Shriver declared the battle of the sexes to be over, replaced by negotiation. Translation: In all the difficult decisions of daily life, the things that get us from here to there, much still needs to be worked out.”

Apart from the fact I wouldn’t waste my time attending a conference where the highlight is crying, this sounds like an excuse to whine about how hard women have it and that men don’t do enough to help them … with a dash of we’re so helpless or fragile thrown in.

Is this the era of independent women or isn’t it? Independent women can handle things without whining or crying and, if a women’s conference that celebrates women is such a good idea, then let men have a men’s conference where they are allowed to celebrate being … men.

There’s another double-standard highlighted here: At a conference where the theme is supporting women, why aren’t more California women supporting politicians like Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina? The article suggests it’s because the pressure is off:

“There are now enough women in high-ranking positions that it is harder to invoke the passions that led to firsts, like election nationwide of several women senators in 1992 or Hillary Clinton’s close second in last year’s presidential contest.”

I think there’s a simpler answer that explains why some women are more equal than others. I’ll let Victor Davis Hanson explain it in a slightly different context (H/T Eric Blair):

“What if you took everything Yale Law School Hillary has said abroad the last week [in Pakistan] and put it into the mouth of Idaho BA Sarah Palin?

The press would have gone ballistic about her ignorance of the Middle East, her sermonizing, her scapegoating, her factual errors, etc. (What is it about Palin that drives the elite, especially elite women, crazy? Great looks? That Middle-America accent? The 5 kids and he-man husband? The lack of a powerful father or spouse who could jump-start her “feminist” career with money, contacts, and influence? That Idaho BA? The wink? The charisma and, indeed, sensuality so lacking in her angry critics?)”

Of course, what does Victor Davis Hanson know? He’s just a man.

– DRJ

[Guest post by DRJ]

According to some Swedish sixth graders and the European Advertising Standards Alliance, Toys ‘R Us doesn’t have a clue what kids want:

“A class at Gustavslund school in south central Sweden spent more than two years studying gender roles before setting sights on the 2008 Toys “R” Us Christmas catalog. When they did, they were more than prepared to recognize the sexist crud inside. “Small girls in princess stuff … and here are boys dressed as super heroes,” 13-year-old Hannes Psajd told a local newspaper while flipping through the catalog. “It’s obvious that you get affected by this.”
***
The class filed a complaint with Swedish regulatory agency Reklamombudsmannen, which is a member of the European Advertising Standards Alliance, arguing that the catalog modeled restrictive sex stereotypes. The agency reviewed the complaint and found that, indeed, boys are shown “playing in action filled environments,” while girls “are shown sitting or standing in passive poses,” the agency said in a statement. As a whole, “the catalogue portrays children’s games and choice of toys in a narrow-minded way, and this exclusion of boys and girls from different types of toys is, in itself, degrading to both genders,” the organization said.

Ultimately, the agency issued an official rebuke this week of Toys “R” Us, arguing that it “discriminates based on gender and counteracts positive social behaviour, lifestyles, and attitudes.”

Clearly these sixth graders deserve a Nobel Peace Prize.

– DRJ

[Guest post by DRJ]

Oh, those sensitive Democrats. First Barack Obama joked with Jay Leno about his “Special Olympics” bowling skills and now the health insurance bill refers to facilities for the “mentally retarded.”

Medicine has viewed “retarded” as a negative label since at least 2001. Thus, the American Association on Mental Retardation is now the American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities and the American Psychological Association hosts a similarly renamed section. But I doubt we’ll see this particular faux pas on Saturday Night Live or PC TV.

– DRJ