It don’t get no more American than that.

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Rand Paul, who was on the field during what “would have been a massacre,” will be UD‘s colleague next semester; he will “teach DC college students about dystopias.”

First Lesson Plan: Imagine a place where you can’t go outside to play ball because nothing stops nuts from getting semi-automatic rifles.

Discuss.

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Hard to keep up.

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Australia banned semiautomatic weapons [in 1996], and required everyone to sell those they already owned to the government. There have been no mass shootings in the country since then.

NYT.

No kidding.

The leadership of the Israeli city Beit Shemesh has told that country’s courts that everyone’s too afraid to go in and enforce legal decisions. The latest one orders the town to take down its many threatening and humiliating signs — signs that not only tell women how to dress, but order them to keep their vileness away from sacred areas. Ultra-orthodox fanatics in town are now so violently out of control that the whole place has become a no-go zone.

[T]he central commercial area of Ramat Beit Shemesh Bet has become so notorious that it has become known by some non-haredi residents as “The Heart of Darkness.”

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In his ruling on Wednesday, Judge Yigal Marzel decried the lawlessness in the extremist neighborhoods of Beit Shemesh, in which, he noted, the authorities appear to have abandoned the area to violent radicals.

Marzel quoted the response of [the town’s mayor] and the Beit Shemesh Municipality, in which they described the situation in the city as “a war” and “catastrophic,” where extremists are violent toward IDF soldiers, pedestrians and police personnel, throw stones at people and vehicles, and harass and curse people.

“[The state] cannot reconcile itself to this situation, and all the authorities need to take the necessary steps to restore order and observance of the law,” wrote the judge.

The state cannot reconcile itself… Interesting language. It’s like saying I can’t fucking believe this. It doesn’t get you anywhere.

And just as there are people with deep pockets paying the fines of women who keep wearing the burqa where it’s illegal, so UD feels certain there are people with deep pockets happy to pay the penalty ($1,400 per sign every day) the judge will soon impose on lawless Beit Shemesh. For this religious state is in the peculiar position of having decided that the ultra-orthodox of Beit Shemesh are the world’s realest Jews, and thus the very heart and soul of Israel. And now the courts of that country are living with this decision.

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A peculiar position? Only if you forget what Ronald Dworkin said about religious states.

What’s next? France?

Oh. Right.

Longtime readers know that Munro
Leaf, author of Ferdinand the Bull,
lived in UD‘s Garrett Park house.

Les UDs bought two topiary
bulls in his honor.

Here’s Judy’s wonderful blog.

Once he’s been removed, you’ll be much better off.

It won’t be traumatic. It’ll be good for you.

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Meanwhile, UD‘s pretty excited to see all the national and global news coverage that’s finally being brought to female genital mutilation. When American doctors with medical degrees from Johns Hopkins University are doing hundreds of them in Michigan, it’s time to make noise.

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Who knew?

It’s on the telly too.

Her punishment is severe, though: she undergoes a forced clitoridectomy. …[T]he programme makers [had] consultations with the UN over the importance of highlighting female genital mutilation…

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Creating a bit of a stir.

Good. Time to pay attention.

Scott Karsten, who represented the [Wesleyan] fraternity in …negotiations [toward going co-ed], testified this week that the chapter was at a disadvantage in complying because Wesleyan provided only vague descriptions of what it meant by coeducation and never specifically defined its expectations.

[The president of Wesleyan] said he never felt an explicit definition was necessary.

… Digest.

It’s the details that get to you. One of the Penn State students on trial for manslaughter and a bunch of other stuff tried, at one time, to leave the deadly fraternity he had just joined. He was, one assumes, disgusted and humiliated by the hazing he’d undergone.

The president of the fraternity – himself facing the same array of charges in the long squalid death under his care of pledge Timothy Piazza – talks him out of it.

Too bad. The guy shoulda gone with his gut and gotten out. Now Gary DiBileo gets to have his life ruined, along with his frat brothers.

If you truly care, if you’re truly principled, you do something that actually attracts people’s attention. You don’t simply sit around while the leading imam at your mosque says disgusting things. With the support of the mosque. You quit.

A leader at one of Virginia’s largest mosques has resigned after the imam there made comments in support of female genital mutilation.

Imam Johari Abdul-Malik, who was director of outreach at the Dar Al-Hijrah mosque in Falls Church, posted his resignation Friday on his website.

Abdul-Malik says he’s leaving after “many reprehensible statements” by Dar Al-Hijrah’s senior imam, Shaker Elsayed, including his recent comments on genital mutilation.

I like “reprehensible.” But I like “many” even more. When this sort of thing happens to hit the news, public statements typically suggest the speaker was having a bad day or stumbled over his words blah blah. The miscreant himself, in his bizarre (and now recanted?) apology, suggested as much.

No, no, says his colleague. The guy preaches much that is reprehensible. So reprehensible, and so supported by the mosque, that Abdul-Malik has no choice but to leave.

Due to the lack of decisive leadership and on the part of the board of directors of The Dar Al-Hijrah Islamic Center and after many reprehensible statements made by the senior Imam, Shaker Elsayed, including the most recent statements on Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) or female circumcision and especially after his public recanting of his apology I hereby resign my position as Director of Outreach.

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Details.

“A lot of Muslims feel like they’ve been under attack and feel like they’ve made a lot of concessions since 9/11 and now they want to plant this flag on this hill,” [says one observer].

Hell of a hill.

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FGM is a practice that, by virtue of the gravity of the harms it causes, can appropriately be called evil, yet it is not done out of evil intent.

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The fundamental societal motive for FGM stems from a belief held by several cultures; cutting away a woman’s genitals leads to stable marriages. The rationale is that if the woman is incapable of experiencing sexual pleasure, she will not be tempted to seek it outside her marriage, and devote herself to satisfying her husband.

Cultural sovereignty must yield to universal human rights when some basic, objectively vital rights such as life, health, bodily integrity etc. (which most cultures do, or should, value) are violated. The argument is one in favour of universal rights, not identical practices, and hence, the diversity and uniqueness of cultures will continue, which is the essence of multiculturalism.

Did SOS simply read this sentence too early in the morning, or do we have a problem here?

The wrens chose this planter full of ferns
inches away from UD‘s front door.

I don’t know about their other babies, but
this one isn’t shy.

… but as a writer you want to remain calm and control your prose as you discuss the upcoming HBO movie. This prose has too much figurative language all over the place, creating the chaos of mixed metaphors. SOS has helpfully italicized the problem areas:

Make no mistake: there’s plenty of material to be mined for the HBO drama. The firestorm that ensued following the 2011 arrest of Sandusky nearly tore the Penn State community in half and caused a flurry of controversy in all areas of public conversation. Resurrecting these events and examining the tense subject matter through the lens of famed director Barry Levinson and the prowess of Pacino will be mighty fascinating.

This prose literally runs hot and cold, as we venture from a firestorm that neatly cuts a community in half to a snowy flurry. Mining and resurrections are thrown in for good measure, leaving the reader all of a mucksweat (to quote Bella Cohen).

‘CAL IS FUCKED BECAUSE OF ITS STUPID STADIUM DEAL’

The [University of California – Berkeley] stadium debt is so large that funding may have to come out of the school’s non-athletics budget soon. The school’s largest donors donate to both the school and the athletics programs, and any disruption of sports could decrease the overall amount of donations.

What’s a philosophy BA from Yeshiva, who is also the son of the university’s chancellor, up to lately?

He’s using malicious charges of anti-Semitism to further his criminal conspiracy.

[Shalom] Lamm cast himself and his project as victims of anti-Semitism even as he was in the process of conspiring to corrupt village elections. “If you’re a conspiracy theorist and you think the Jews control things and are pulling puppet strings, then this all looks like this grand conspiracy,” Lamm told the Forward in February of 2014. “It’s basic anti-Semitism. You would have to be a believer in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion to think that we could actually manipulate the world this way. It’s a complete absurdity.”

That very month, Lamm was working to get around opponents in the village government by enrolling ineligible voters to vote in village elections, according to the indictment filed against him in December. He and others created fake back-dated leases to make it seem as though the new voters lived in the village, and even put toothbrushes in their purported homes to make them seem occupied.

Next move: Anti-Semites in the court system forced him to plead guilty.