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A number of Al Azhar ulema expressed their opposition to building a mosque near [where] the events of September 11 [occurred], convinced that it is “a conspiracy to confirm a clear connection between the strikes of September [11] and Islam.” Dr. ‘Abd al-Mu’ti Bayumi, a member of the Islamic Research Academy [of Al Azhar] told Al Masry Al Youm that he rejects the building of any mosque in this area [Ground Zero], because the “devious mentality” desires to connect these events [of 9/11] with Islam, though he maintains that Islam is innocent of this accusation. Instead, it is a “Zionist conspiracy,” which many are making use of to harm the religion. Likewise, Dr. Amna Nazir, professor of doctrine and philosophy at Al Azhar, expressed her rejection that a mosque be built near the World Trade Center, saying: “Building a mosque on this rubble indicates bad intention — even if we wished to shut our eyes, close our minds, and insist on good will. I hope it is a sincere step, and not a new conspiracy against Islam and Muslims.”

Islam is the new Communism.

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Watching the Treasury conference on housing finance earlier this week, I was struck by the gloomy thought that we will never get out of this housing mess until we are ready to face facts. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner’s remark that the demise of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac was caused by their pursuit of short-term profits was not a constructive contribution to the resolution of the major issues before us. In reality, Fannie and Freddie were doomed by a badly designed government housing policy, and government efforts to disguise its responsibility with a false narrative will only make a solution more difficult.

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It is a long-standing practice in Islamic warfare to invite the targeted population to convert before attacking. Indeed, it goes back to Muhammad himself:

“When you meet your enemies who are polytheists, invite them to three courses of action. If they respond to any one of these, you also accept it and withold yourself from doing them any harm. Invite them to (accept) Islam; if they respond to you, accept it from them and desist from fighting against them. … If they refuse to accept Islam, demand from them the Jizya. If they agree to pay, accept it from them and hold off your hands. If they refuse to pay the tax, seek Allah’s help and fight them….” (Sahih Muslim 19.4294)

Well, Christianity is just as bad! Look at all the times Jesus told his disciples to demand that enemies either pay a tax or they would fight them! (Oh, wait … I guess He didn’t….)

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This is one of the funniest things I’ve see this year. Colbert should be this funny.

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The Islamic symbolism of the design for the late World Trade Center.

Having rejected modernism and the Saudi royal family, it’s no surprise that Bin Laden would turn against Yamasaki’s work in particular. He must have seen how Yamasaki had clothed the World Trade Center, a monument of Western capitalism, in the raiment of Islamic spirituality. Such mixing of the sacred and the profane is old hat to us—after all, Cass Gilbert’s classic Woolworth Building, dubbed the Cathedral to Commerce, is decked out in extravagant Gothic regalia. But to someone who wants to purify Islam from commercialism, Yamasaki’s implicit Mosque to Commerce would be anathema. To Bin Laden, the World Trade Center was probably not only an international landmark but also a false idol.

There’s no pleasing some people.

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How to hate yourself for not being rich.

And to Sasha’s point, unlike the traditional form of anorexia, the plight of ambitious men doesn’t receive Movie-of-the-Week treatment or its own PSAs. We don’t have a Dove Beauty campaign to show what real men’s finances look like (though perhaps we should–the closest thing is my pal Ramit’s Money Diaries, and even there, the only two male diarists focus on showing how well they’re doing, rather than confessing their financial sins–in marked contrast to the far more numerous female diarists).

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Businesses have a legitimate worry about health care costs, rising taxes, and other artifacts of Obama’s legislation.

On the consumer side, this is not a typical recession. This is a credit bust recession with consumers still deleveraging. With savings deposits yielding close to 0% and with credit card rates over 20%, common sense dictates consumers pay down bills rather than make new purchases. The housing bubble has burst and boomers are headed into retirement with insufficient savings.

That Mr. Fleischer fails to articulate reasons that others agree with is irrelevant. The pertinent fact is he is not hiring.

In other words: It doesn’t matter whether a business owner is right in his reasons for not hiring; the key fact is that he’s not hiring. And unless the government can change his mind, he’s not going to be hiring in the near future. Ponder what the government has done so far to encourage job creation — such as passing out money to local governments so that they can pay government workers, bailing out large financial and manufacturing enterprises, mandating new and expensive entitlements, and increasing the national debt like a balloon vendor at a state fair. What is there in all of this to encourage a small business owner to hire anybody?

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As so often happens, what the Crust views as a moral crusade is in actuality merely a fashion statement.

A single 10-mile round trip by car to the grocery store or the farmers’ market will easily eat up about 14,000 calories of fossil fuel energy. Just running your refrigerator for a week consumes 9,000 calories of energy. That assumes it’s one of the latest high-efficiency models; otherwise, you can double that figure. Cooking and running dishwashers, freezers and second or third refrigerators (more than 25 percent of American households have more than one) all add major hits. Indeed, households make up for 22 percent of all the energy expenditures in the United States.

Agriculture, on the other hand, accounts for just 2 percent of our nation’s energy usage; that energy is mainly devoted to running farm machinery and manufacturing fertilizer. In return for that quite modest energy investment, we have fed hundreds of millions of people, liberated tens of millions from backbreaking manual labor and spared hundreds of millions of acres for nature preserves, forests and parks that otherwise would have come under the plow.

Don’t forget the astonishing fact that the total land area of American farms remains almost unchanged from a century ago, at a little under a billion acres, even though those farms now feed three times as many Americans and export more than 10 times as much as they did in 1910.

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Another excellent reason to stay away from Facebook.

Darwin Award.

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I don’t know what the Russian word for hubris is, but these folks have got it.

Presumably we can expect the heirs of the Romanovs to weigh in at some point.

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A German historian argues that the massive proliferation of books, and thus knowledge, laid the foundation for the country’s industrial might.

Höffner has researched that early heyday of printed material in Germany and reached a surprising conclusion — unlike neighboring England and France, Germany experienced an unparalleled explosion of knowledge in the 19th century.

Höffner believes it was the chronically weak book market that caused England, the colonial power, to fritter away its head start within the span of a century, while the underdeveloped agrarian state of Germany caught up rapidly, becoming an equally developed industrial nation by 1900.

Even more startling is the factor Höffner believes caused this development — in his view, it was none other than copyright law, which was established early in Great Britain, in 1710, that crippled the world of knowledge in the United Kingdom.

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Well, yeah.

In Islam, however, there is no such thing as a half-Muslim. Like all monotheistic religions, Islam is an exclusive faith.

As the son of the Muslim father, Senator Obama was born a Muslim under Muslim law as it is universally understood. It makes no difference that, as Senator Obama has written, his father said he renounced his religion. Likewise, under Muslim law based on the Koran his mother’s Christian background is irrelevant.

Of course, as most Americans understand it, Senator Obama is not a Muslim. He chose to become a Christian, and indeed has written convincingly to explain how he arrived at his choice and how important his Christian faith is to him.

His conversion, however, was a crime in Muslim eyes; it is “irtidad” or “ridda,” usually translated from the Arabic as “apostasy,” but with connotations of rebellion and treason. Indeed, it is the worst of all crimes that a Muslim can commit, worse than murder (which the victim’s family may choose to forgive).

With few exceptions, the jurists of all Sunni and Shiite schools prescribe execution for all adults who leave the faith not under duress; the recommended punishment is beheading at the hands of a cleric, although in recent years there have been both stonings and hangings. (Some may point to cases in which lesser punishments were ordered — as with some Egyptian intellectuals who have been punished for writings that were construed as apostasy — but those were really instances of supposed heresy, not explicitly declared apostasy as in Senator Obama’s case.)

Because no government is likely to allow the prosecution of a President Obama — not even those of Iran and Saudi Arabia, the only two countries where Islamic religious courts dominate over secular law — another provision of Muslim law is perhaps more relevant: it prohibits punishment for any Muslim who kills any apostate, and effectively prohibits interference with such a killing.

At the very least, that would complicate the security planning of state visits by President Obama to Muslim countries, because the very act of protecting him would be sinful for Islamic security guards. More broadly, most citizens of the Islamic world would be horrified by the fact of Senator Obama’s conversion to Christianity once it became widely known — as it would, no doubt, should he win the White House. This would compromise the ability of governments in Muslim nations to cooperate with the United States in the fight against terrorism, as well as American efforts to export democracy and human rights abroad.

Why this ‘religion’ is different from every other religion is left as an exercise for the reader, as is the fate of non-Muslims in a Muslim world.

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Bloomberg News keeps up its track record of biased coverage of the effort to extend the Bush tax cuts with an article about an effort by business groups who back the tax cuts. The article quotes not a single business owner or executive, but it does quote three professors. If it were an article headlined “liberal professors favor tax increases,” that’d be one thing, but it’s supposed to be an article about a coalition of business groups that favor extending the tax cuts.

Well, professors just know these things, right?

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There’s a lot of stuff out there that can only be described as “burger junk.” You know, the things sold on late night informercials that try to convince you that your burgers are not good enough, fast enough, or novel enough for discerning modern palates. In the interest of being utterly thorough, this week I’ve decided to round up five of the most popular burger gadgets and put them through their paces.

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Here’s the deal: Remember how Snooki, drunk or sober, was never seen without that Coach bag dangling from the crook of her arm? Snooki and her Coach were as synonymous as The Situation and his six-pack. But then the winds of change started blowing on Jersey Shore. Every photograph of Guido-huntin’ Snooki showed her toting a new designer purse. Why the sudden disloyalty? Was she trading up? Was she vomiting into her purses and then randomly replacing them? The answer is much more intriguing.

Allegedly, the anxious folks at these various luxury houses are all aggressively gifting our gal Snookums with free bags. No surprise, right? But here’s the shocker: They are not sending her their own bags. They are sending her each other’s bags! Competitors‘ bags!

The bottom line? Nobody in fashion wants to co-brand with Snooki.

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Actually, that could be a lot of fun. Unfortunately, it’s just another example of government bureaucrats being incompetent.

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The mechanism on the Clock, at Wells Cathedral in Somerset, will be set manually for the last time next week, following the retirement of the last member of a family who has maintained it for almost a century.

Wells Cathedral officials said the mechanical clock was being replaced because they were unable to find a suitable replacement for Mr Fisher.

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My, what a surprise. Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

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And, as we all know, U.S. intelligence sources are absolutely reliable.

Absolutely.

Sure, I believe that.

Don’t think the Israelis will buy it, though.

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Rich people typically become rich because they don’t accept the conventional wisdom in their chosen fields, being more ready to ‘think outside the box’ and achieve success thereby. But intellectually they’re as stuck in the box as everybody else. And it’s a pretty silly box.

Successful entrepreneurs-turned-philanthropists typically say they feel a responsibility to “give back” to society. But “giving back” implies they have taken something. What, exactly, have they taken? Yes, they have amassed great sums of wealth. But that wealth is the reward they have earned for investing their time and talent in creating products and services that others value. They haven’t taken from society, but rather enriched us in ways that were previously unimaginable.

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Ask yourself whether the Washington Post would be urging no retrial were the defendant a former Republican Governor. The question almost answers itself.

I guess some animals are more equal than others.

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Ponder why an Asian country of 230 million people needs handouts from a European country of 17 million people. Might the fact that 90% of the population is Muslim have something to do with it?

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Apparently there are a whole collection of these ‘Literal Video Versions’ of famous music videos. I don’t think I’ve ever laughed so hard in my life.

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Certainly a more productive use of one’s time.

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The first point to observe is that “our” college graduation rate is just a statistical artifact, like “our” home ownership rate and “our” voting rate. To people imbued with a central planning mindset, such statistics betoken national success or failure. In fact, the nation isn’t doing anything. Millions of individuals are deciding whether or not to go to college and complete the course of study. Students and parents make those decisions with good (but not necessarily perfect) knowledge of the student’s capabilities, the costs of college, and the prospective benefits of doing so.

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A court in Saudi Arabia is seeking medical advice on whether it is possible to cut the spinal cord of a man as a punishment after he was indicted of causing paralysis to another man during a fight, a local daily reported on Thursday.

The unidentified defendant hit Abdul Aziz Al Mutairi, another Saudi, with a cleaver during a fight more than two years ago and the trial has been delayed because Mutairi is insisting that his attacker suffer the same injury.

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In the frenzy to get kindergartners into the top private schools, parents are now hiring consultants to coach their children on the art of the interview, which these exclusive schools term “playdates.”

It’s hard out there for the Crust.

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Around 500 actors for The National Youth Theatre of Great Britain perform S’Warm at Battersea Power Station in London to raise awareness of the alleged global environmental crisis caused by dwindling bee populations

Mostly, silly stunts like this raise awareness that a lot of people in the world (actors, especially) have too much time on their hands.

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Hand him 50 feet of hemp and let him chew on that for a while.

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They don’t make Naval officers like they used to, apparently.

Ensign Steve Crowston claimed that when he was called into a room with fellow officers to be given their call signs, his name had been written on a white board with a list of suggestions that included “Gay Boy” and “Cowgirl”.

He said the group eventually voted for him to be known as “Romo’s Bitch” because he was a fan of Tony Romo, the Dallas Cowboys quarterback.

Mr Crowston, an administrative officer with Strike Fighter Squadron 136 at Naval Air Station, Oceana, Virginia, has not disclosed his sexual orientation but complained to senior officers.

Don’t Ask Don’t Tell apparently doesn’t include Don’t Whine.

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I suspect that C. Van Carter and I were brothers in an earlier life.

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Police in western China detained a man suspected of driving an explosive-laden tricycle into a crowd on Thursday, killing seven people and injuring 13, a government official told CNN.

Next time you see a kid on the sidewalk, he might be a terrorist.

Kathleen Parker used to be a conservative. She then sold out and is now comfortable as a Voice of the Crust.

Reason tells us something else: The Muslims who want to build this mosque didn’t fly airplanes into skyscrapers. They don’t support terrorism. By what understanding do we assign guilt to all for the actions of a relative few?

That’s not reason, that’s invincible stupidity.

When members of a group commit atrocities in the name of the group, and the fundamental principles of said group do not rule out the commission of atrocities in service to the advancement of the power of the group, AND THE FOUNDER AND ROLE MODEL OF SAID GROUP COMMITTED ATROCITIES IN THE PAST, and other members of that same group neither denounce those atrocities nor renounce the commission of atrocities in service to the advancement of the group, said Other Members, WHETHER OR NOT THEY HAVE COMMITTED ATROCITIES, are reasonably suspect of being open to the commission of atrocities, and may reasonably be treated as enemies by people not in the group, who would be natural targets for further atrocities.

This is why Communists are our enemies, and always will be.

This is why Nazis are our enemies, and always will be.

This is why Fascists are our enemies, and always will be

And this is why Muslims are our enemies, and always will be.

THAT is reason. And Kathleen Parker is an idiot.

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Just in case you were wondering. I know I was.

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Perhaps because Voices of the Crust like the New York Times encourage them to feel as if they world owes them a living.

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And, most important, how Blago’s people got to her.

Fellow jurors say one person refused to budge on multiple counts in a trial covering racketeering, conspiracy, wire fraud, bribery and extortion charges.

Steve Sailer pierces the veil.

One other reason is to discriminate against African-Americans when advertising for a nanny. Putting in a foreign language requirement is a legal way to state No African-Americans Need Apply.

Interestingly enough, I read an article many years ago that postulated that the classic Southern accent came about because so many Southern white kids were effectively raised by black nannies, and the African-influenced version of English that they imparted gradually mutated into what we know today. This, of course, may account for why Negro dialect sounds ‘southern’ to most non-Southerners.

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The New York Pizza Burger ($12.99), a 9-and-a-half-inch wide burger made with four Whopper patties topped with pepperoni, mozzarella cheese, marinara sauce, and Tuscan pesto sauce. It’ll be available exclusively at the New York City Whopper Bar starting in September to fulfill that longtime desire for a giant burger that sort of tastes like a pizza.

Is. This. A. Great. Country. Or. What?

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The private lives of young people are now so well documented on the internet that many will have to change their names on reaching adulthood, Google’s CEO has claimed.

Perhaps after a Spirit Quest. Burning Man would probably do.

Thomas Sowell doesn’t like what he’s seeing.

While various political leaders have, over the centuries, done things that violated either the spirit or the letter of the Constitution, few dared to openly say that the Constitution was wrong and that what they wanted was right.

It was the Progressives of a hundred years ago who began saying that the Constitution needed to be subordinated to whatever they chose to call “the needs of the times.” Nor were they content to say that the Constitution needed more Amendments, for that would have meant that the much disdained masses would have something to say about whether, or what kind, of Amendments were needed.

Steve Sailer pulls no punches.

Four decades into the feminist era, the number one movie at the box office is Sylvester Stallone’s The Expendables, in which Eighties action heroes blow stuff up. Right behind is Julia Roberts’ Eat, Pray, Love, in which a divorcée expensively feels sorry for herself in Italy, India, and Indonesia. (Iowa, Indiana, and Idaho presumably being all booked up.)

When depressed about the intellectual flaccidity of the 21st Century, I cheer myself up by noting that nobody wholly subscribes to feminist orthodoxy anymore. Most people can now admit that social conditioning isn’t what differentiates the sexes; instead, it’s the only hope of their ever getting along civilly. When allowed to indulge their inner fantasies, however, as incarnated in movies such as The Expendables and Eat, Pray, Love, the sexes barely seem to inhabit the same planet.

The glossy lifestyles portrayed in chick flicks always raise the question, “How can she afford that?” Yet, money goes unmentioned as unromantic. That reminds me of the 1970s when I was repeatedly told that free agency would make pro sports unpopular by exposing tawdry fiscal matters. Money talk, though, just made pro sports even more popular.

In my experience, women are extremely interested in how much things cost. I suspect that, just as men like talking about LeBron James’ contract, women would enjoy a romance movie that dishes on how much the heroine is shelling out.

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Soon to be a major motion picture, starring Angelina Jolie.

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So how are biotech sugar beets (already approved by the USDA, mind you) significantly affecting the human environment? Activists at the Center for Food Safety and the Sierra Club argued in federal court that sugar beets improved to resist the herbicide glyphosate might result in the development of superweeds or might interbreed with organic chard and regular beets.

When did ‘activist’ become a career field?

Unlike drugs which can sell for beaucoup bucks, crops are commodities that sell for dollars per bushel. So only big companies can marshal the financial and legal resources required to get approval for crops that sell by millions of bushels and bales, corn, soybean, canola, and cotton. Meanwhile the biotech improvement of smaller niche crops, say tomatoes and green beans, that might benefit even backyard gardeners remains stymied.

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The Dutch Royal Library is currently making available online all newspapers from the Second World War, which includes Nazi propaganda. Now the Dutch department of Justice has advised the library not to make digital versions of these publications, because it is possible that the Public Prosecutor might accuse the Royal Library of distributing publications that incite hatred.

This is too absurd for words. Government bureaucrats are like dim-witted robots. Anything that fits their target parameters is attacked, whether it makes sense or not. Eventually we’ll wind up like the Nazis, with Goverment Agency A at war with Government Agency B, and the ordinary citizen trampled in the ensuing riot.

Steve Sailer reminds us that large differences in phenotype come in small genotype packages.

So, in the big picture, Labrador retrievers and pit bulls don’t actually differ very much genetically. They do differ genetically on a very small number of genes. But some of those few genes that differ are related to biting. Labs tend to retract their teeth and gum whatever they’re handling with their mouths, while pit bulls tend to bite down and, more unusually, not let go while they whip their heads back and forth. So, that tiny, tiny fraction of the dog genome is important when deciding which breed of dog to buy depending on your needs — e.g., pet for your toddlers or guard dog for your crack stash.

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I can think of one: ‘What does the inside of that tank look like?’

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Hundreds of hobbits at risk from hypertension.