[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here.  Or by Twitter @AaronWorthing.]

Just short commentary on a bunch of random stories.

First, we see that we have killed one of Qdaffy’s* sons.  Good, may he roast in flames, but um, then I guess we have to kill Qdaffy, too, right?  Otherwise there will be a terrorist reprisal, right?

Boy it’s a good thing that Obama went into this war with the consent of the American people and of Congress as he himself said was constitutionally required.  Oh that’s right, he didn’t. Sigh.

Also allegedly we hit a school for disabled children and an orphanage.  Um, color me skeptical.  To hear these dictators talk all we hit is their orphanages, baby milk factories and so on.  It’s terrible if it happened and we should regret our mistake, but I won’t buy it until it’s confirmed after the dictator is gone.

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Fox News calls in an expert who says, yeah, the layering in the birth certificate is not a sign of forgery.  I’m not an expert, but it sounds pretty plausible.  (And to put in the usual disclaimer, I am not a birther.  I believe Obama is constitutionally eligible to be president and woefully over his head.)

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I agree with pretty much everything Eugene Volokh writes, here.  He is talking about a case in Pennsylvania where a Muslim man dies and his will demands the division of some of his assets according to Sharia law.  I don’t mean he divided it up himself according to his religious principles.  I mean his will said the assets in question “should be divided according to Islamic Laws and Sharia.”  So the court does it and gives twice as much to his sons as his daughters.

Volokh argues that if the man wanted to divide it that way himself that would have been okay.  Its sexist and wrong, but it’s his property and it’s his right.  But on the other hand our courts should not be in the business of interpreting the “correct” meaning of a holy book, or the contents of a faith.  And yeah, I pretty much agree with all of that. Still you should read the whole thing.

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Meanwhile you might have heard that King and Spaulding, a law firm hired to represent the House of Representatives, withdrew from representation of the House in the DOMA litigation.  Well, first Ed Whelan does a good job pointing out that this action was unethical under the Rules of Professional Conduct.  Meaning they could actually get in ethical trouble over this.

But for much more fun, Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli has decided to fire King and Spaulding over this.  And actually his argument for doing so goes beyond tit-for-tat:

[I]t is crucial for us to be able to trust and rely on the fact that our outside counsel will not desert Virginia due to pressure by an outside group or groups.

Virginia seeks firms of commitment, courage, strength and toughness, and unfortunately, what the world has learned of King & Spalding, is that your firm utterly lacks those qualities.

Ouch, that’s going to leave a mark.  You can read the whole letter here, which is continually harsh.  Cuccinelli points out, for instance, that the firm has no trouble representing terrorists, but apparently not supporters of the Defense of Marriage Act.  Hey, King and Spaulding, did you know that the terrorists would like to see every gay person murdered?  So if you drop everyone who is not perfectly politically correct on gay rights…

And of course Professor Jacobson has more thoughts.

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*Qdaffy is how I have chosen to spell the name of the dictator running Libya right now, because 1) it is mocking him and 2) it seems to be about as good a spelling as any.

[Posted and authored by Aaron Worthing.]

[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here.  Or by Twitter @AaronWorthing.]

Seriously, sound off on how awesome this clip is.  The National Black Chamber of Commerce President, Harry Alford, goes on Laura’s show and tells her things like that Obama is a Marxist, that voting for him was the worst mistake of his life…  Yeah, it’s that good.

But by far my favorite part? When Laura asks him why he voted for Obama and he admits it was because he was black. Which kind of confirms what I have been saying for years: at least part of the vote in his favor was race-based.

And on some level I don’t completely blame him. Considering 400 years of bad history, considering all that went on, if you were black and for the first time in your life you had the chance to vote for a black guy to be president who might actually win, wouldn’t that be a very hard temptation to resist? Wouldn’t it be very easy to ignore some of the criticisms?

Hell, I have said before that prior to 2008, if all things were equal, I would vote for the black guy for president. The problem was as little as I liked McCain (especially for McCain-Feingold), Obama was nowhere even close to being equal to that man.

So I won’t blame, but I think it was a mistake, as Harry himself admits.

By the way if this guy seems familiar at all, he was also the guy who shot down Sen. Boxer for hour racially condescending display:

I remember thinking at the time that it was a little weird for the head of the National Black Chamber of Commerce to complain he was being pigeonholed by race, but actually in the Ingraham clip he explains why it was necessary for such an organization to exist—because just about every other ethnicity has one.  There’s nothing wrong with them saying, “we’ll disband when the other groups disband.”

Big hat tip to Hot Air.

[Posted and authored by Aaron Worthing.]

[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here.  Or by Twitter @AaronWorthing.]

Update: Instalink! Thanks. Also via Gateway Pundit, we get this video of the scene.

It doesn’t show you what Jones as saying or doing, though.

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So yesterday Terry Jones held his protest, but at City Hall.  And well… let’s read how the New York Times covers it:

Michigan: Koran-Burning Pastor Draws a Boisterous Crowd

Tensions flared Friday as Terry Jones, the Florida pastor whose burning of a Koran sparked violence in Afghanistan, demonstrated Friday on the steps of City Hall in Dearborn, home to one of the largest Muslim communities in the nation. In rambling remarks over three hours, he mostly spoke against what he called “extremist Muslim influences” in the United States. Dearborn police made three arrests for misdemeanors. The department estimated the crowd at 700 people. Mr. Jones’s comments were often drowned out by the horns of passing cars and the boos and chants of protesters, some of whom carried signs saying, “Terrorist Go Home” and “Leave Us Alone.”

You got that?  They were boisterous.  And only three arrested.  Move along, nothing to see here…

Except it wasn’t really that.  It was a riot of about fifty people.  Of course the local papers, such as the Detroit News and the Detroit Free Press couldn’t very well ignore it.  So in their news pages they editorialize that all of this is his fault.

So this is how the Detroit News covers it:

Florida pastor’s rally ends after brief fracas

Quran-burning Pastor Terry Jones had his say in Dearborn. Few appeared to hear him.

Thunderous boos from a crowd of about 700 protesters drowned out much of his speech Friday afternoon at Dearborn City Hall. The 90-minute event momentarily erupted into chaos when Jones and several dozen of his supporters approached a metal barricade around City Hall and engaged his opponents.

A crowd of at least 50 people surged across Michigan Avenue, breaking a barricade, throwing water bottles and shoes. Riot police restored order within minutes and took at least two people into custody.

Dearborn Mayor John B. O’Reilly Jr. said Jones is partly to blame. “Even though we said, ‘Please don’t go to the barricades,’ he just ignored it,” O’Reilly said. “My assessment is this is a man without character.”

Funny, I feel the same way about you, Mayor.

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… ever.

[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here.  Or by Twitter @AaronWorthing.]

So as you might have noticed the Donald has moved from demanding Obama’s birth certificate to demanding Obama’s transcripts, saying at one point that he wanted to know how Obama got into these good school given he was allegedly not a great student.  Now bear in mind, Combover also claimed that the long-form birth certificate was missing or destroyed, so whatever his sources are, they are unreliable.

But as Ace pointed out, Chris Matthews sees racism in all of this.  From his transcript last night:

MATTHEWS:  Here‘s Trump yesterday.  Let him talk.  We will let him talk from New Hampshire.  It won‘t be too informative, but here he is.  Let‘s listen to Donald Trump.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, TRUMP ORGANIZATION:  I think if he wants to release it, that‘s fine.  And if he doesn‘t want to release it, that‘s fine, too.  But the word is—you know, you think you‘d want to release it, actually, because the word is he wasn‘t a good student and he ended up getting into Columbia and Harvard.

QUESTION:  Whose word?

TRUMP:  And I‘d like to know—I‘d like to know—well, this is what I read written by some of the people in this room.  I‘d like to know, how does he get into Harvard, how does he get into Columbia if he isn‘t a good student?  It‘s an interesting thing.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MATTHEWS:  How do you take that, Clarence?

PAGE:  I think he‘s got his presidents mixed up.  He‘s talking about George Bush.

(LAUGHTER)

MATTHEWS:  The legacy (INAUDIBLE)

PAGE:  But no, I‘ll tell you how black folks feel about it.  It sounds like he‘s saying he‘s an Affirmative Action baby.

MATTHEWS:  Yes.

And they go on.  But not fifteen minutes later, he says this, when talking with Jonathan Alter:

MATTHEWS:  Well, what about Trump?  What about—Trump…

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS:  … saying now, Donald Trump is now questioning his application to Harvard…

ALTER:  Well, of course.

MATTHEWS:  … and Harvard Law and to Columbia, that he didn‘t really deserve to get in.  You would never say that about a white person.  Right off the street, you wouldn‘t say it.

ALTER:  Right.  This is race.  This is race, Chris.

You got that?  No one would ever question how a white president got into a good school.  I mean besides Clarence Page and Chris Matthews earlier that evening.

Hey do you want to see Matthews do this?  Click on the image and it will take you to the Right Scoop, which put together the video:

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[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here.  Or by Twitter @AaronWorthing.]

As usual, you are positively encouraged to engage in sock puppetry in this thread. The usual rules apply.

Please, be sure to switch back to your regular handle when commenting on other threads. I have made that mistake myself, a lot.

And remember: the worst sin you can commit on this thread is not being funny.

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And for this week’s Friday frivolity, we have the Bill Maher accusing the Onion of ripping him off and getting pwned* in the process.  But I will put it under the fold, because some of the jokes are mildly not safe for work.

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[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here.  Or by Twitter @AaronWorthing.]

About two months ago, on the night the Mubarak regime fell in Egypt, Lara Logan “suffered a brutal and sustained sexual assault and beating before being saved by a group of women and an estimated 20 Egyptian soldiers.”  As I pointed out at the time, that vague description was too sparse.  Well, in yesterday’s New York Times, Mrs. Logan finally spoke out about what happened and plans to talk more on 60 minutes.  I had said—and received a lot of flak for saying—that we should know more than that.  It even led some people to imagine I wanted a pornographic blow-by-blow when all I was looking for was to know generally what the hell happened.  Like was it rape or what?  I think what she says in the Times article is for the most part more than adequate and indeed harrowing.  My only criticism is I would have liked to see her address the claim that the crowd kept shouting “Jew! Jew!” as they did it, either to confirm or deny it.

But what is interesting is how much this article also demonstrates that we were not being told nearly enough about this sort of thing:

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That is all.

UPDATE: I meant the hoopla.

[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here.  Or by Twitter @AaronWorthing.]

So yesterday we had Birthmageddon and the larger reaction is spreading out.  For one thing, Drudge had a fun little Drudge-tapositon (Drudge juxtaposition) as follows:

Which is cheap, but funny.  Meanwhile, Jim Hoft over at Gateway Pundit is really flogging this “layering” story, asserting that the long form birth certificate is a fake.  I pointed out yesterday where the National Review had debunked the claims, here.  Obviously Jim is hoping to get on the bottom floor of a new Rathergate type scandal.  And I will be the first to admit that this video, showing the user pulling the document apart is creepy:

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[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here.  Or by Twitter @AaronWorthing.]

BIG UPDATE: The Sun Story is, at least in part, wrong or misleading, misattributing a real assessment of danger as a threat. Scroll to the bottom for details.

Update: On a similar note, an Islamofascist group in England is making veiled threats of terror attacks on Prince William imminent wedding ceremony because they hate the royals or something.  Narciso in the comments asks “how is that not treason?”  Good question.

About a week ago, I came across this story:

Sila Sahin, a 25-year-old Turkish German living in Berlin, had until now been regarded as a glowing example of how a modern Muslim girl should behave in a multicultural society….

Posing provocatively on the cover of German Playboy magazine with one breast exposed, Sila Sahin seems to be sending a clear and deliberate message to her conservative Turkish family.

‘I did it because I wanted to be free at last,’ she said. ‘These photographs are a liberation from the restrictions of my childhood.’

Here’s a safe-for-work picture of the actress/model (and yes, I will be putting the less-safe-for-work cover photo in question under the fold):

Anyway, a regular commenter here emailed me last week seeking a link to this Jammie Wearing Fool (JWF) post on the subject and declaring, “I see [an] important journalistic purpose for posting [these] photographs!” and I responded to him as follows:

I think next time a veil story comes up [I] will mention that.  [A]lthough truthfully she seems to make it more like a teenager rebelling against strict parents than the larger issue women in [I]slam have in showing their bodies.

And I still feel that way, but in his post JWF wrote “I smell a day of rage coming” and what do you know?

Sila Sahin has been branded a “whore” and a “western slut” after appearing topless on the cover of the German edition of the men’s magazine.

And Islamic fanatics have posted threatening internet messages….

But Islamic internet sites are being monitored by the BND – the German intelligence agency – after threats were posted about her “shaming Muslim womanhood” and “prostituting herself for money”.

One poster on the Jihad Watch website wrote: “She needs to be very careful…” Another simply said: “She must pay.”

Of course I think you can’t hope to understand the issue without seeing what they are upset about, or at least the cover, albeit mildly censored:

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