Steven who?

So you'll say you'll quit your position at BC as an adjunct professor for 'creative writing' at BC because Condeleezza Rice is this year's commencement speaker, eh, Steve?

Don't let the door hit you on the way out.

Dean's always full of surprises

Who knew that the DNC's official position was that marriage was only between a man and a woman?

Does this sound familiar?

Isn't USA TODAY talking about Echelon?

How do I feel about it? Security and liberty are often at odds, aren't they? I recognize that I have libertarian and authoritarian streaks in me. And really, the authoritarian streak is significantly easier to succumb to. How do I decide? I think to myself: Does this change siginificantly affect the way I live my life?

The answer I come up with is 'No'. However, I am increasingly uncomfortable with this turn of events. While the NSA surveillance of information coming into and out of our borders can be more easily rationalized, this is not so easily done.

Hmmm...

Tom Hanks strikes back

Tom Hanks, star of the upcoming film, The Da Vinci Code, struck back against calls from the Catholic Church to boycott the film for its purported attack against Catholicism.

But Oscar-winner Hanks said objectors to The Da Vinci Code are taking the film too seriously, telling the Evening Standard: "We always knew there would be a segment of society that would not want this movie to be shown.

"But the story we tell is loaded with all sorts of hooey and fun kind of scavenger-hunt-type nonsense.

"If you are going to take any sort of movie at face value, particularly a huge-budget motion picture like this, you'd be making a very big mistake.

"It's a damn good story and a lot of fun... all it is is dialogue. That never hurts."

Hanks is absolutely correct that movies and speech never hurt anyone. I wonder if he thought the same way about the Mohammed cartoons? More telling though is Archbishop Angelo Amato's words against the film:

Amato described the novel as "stridently anti-Christian" and called for believers to "reject the lies and gratuitous defamation" in the book.

He added: "If such lies and errors had been directed at the Koran and Holocaust they would have justly provoked a world uprising.

"Instead, if they are directed against the church and Christians, they remain unpunished. I hope you will boycott the film."

Two things:

1) Doesn't Amato know that the only way to silence speech is to riot and kill people? Once the Catholics understand that, the liberals will knuckle under.

2) People need to see this movie if for nothing else but to send a message that speech should not be silenced by anyone. More likely, though, people will see it because it's just good fun.

Sullivan's dumbest...post...ever. Part II!

I thought that Andrew Sullivan's recent post conflating Tennessee cops accused of torture and the Bush Administration as his dumbest post ever. However, his post today connecting Texas incarceration rates with the Bush Administration's detention policy is probably in the running, as well.

Good Lord, can Sullivan get even more hyperbolic? Besides the report explicitly saying that

The List has a number of weaknesses. Figures are
not available for eleven countries and the information
does not relate to the same date. Comparability is
further compromised by different practice in different
countries, for example with regard to whether all pretrial
detainees and juveniles are held under the authority
of the prison administration, and also whether the
prison administration is responsible for psychiatrically ill
offenders and offenders being detained for treatment for
alcoholism and drug addiction. People held in custody
are usually omitted from national totals if they are not
under the authority of the prison administration.

The report also doesn't indicate what is an imprisonable offense, nor does it indicate criminal capture and conviction rates, nor does it control on the government's willingness to actually give a correct census (China, anyone?), among probably an infinite amount of other possibilities the study did not control for.

All the report shows is that the U.S. has a high incarceration rate per 100,000 people, yet Sullivan can once again pull some bizarre metaphor out of his rear.

The politicization of everything

Looks like there will be protests when John McCain gives a commencement speech at New School, in Manhattan.

The money quote:

“John McCain is a conservative politician who supports South Dakota’s ban on abortion, and he’s avidly pro-Iraq War,” said Gregory Tewksbury, a part time faculty member at the New School. “People feel like [the invitation to McCain] made commencement into a political platform.”

Hmmm...you know what it sounds like to me? Sounds like it was the idiotic students and faculty that turned the commencement speech into politics.

Well, it started with the Islamists

And now the Catholic Church is getting in on the act of trying to silence speech by calling for lawsuits and legal action against The Da Vinci Code and others that would 'insult' Catholicism.

Good Lord, where will it end?