Banning handguns - so they won't be stolen?

Alphecca makes the obvious point:

By this logic, we could prevent all crimes of theft by simply banning the temptations: Jewelry, laptops, DVD players, cars, wristwatches, prescription pain killers, and so on. Brilliant! As a bonus, by banning private automobile ownership, traffic infractions and drunk driving deaths will drop like a stone.

Double standards in our Universities: You Don't Say!

While Christian, Jewish, and other faiths are denied any special rights on campus, Universities are all too eager to make exceptions for Muslim student groups:

For example, last year administrators at the Minneapolis Community and Technical College banned a coffee cart operator from playing music “tied to Christmas,” but approved the use of tax dollars to install special basins for Wudu so that Muslims could ritually wash their feet before prayer. College President Phil Davis defended this glaring double standard by absurdly insisting that “the foot-washing facilities are not about religion, they are about customer service and public safety.” At least a dozen other public colleges and universities in the nation have also installed Wudu facilities, including George Mason University in Fairfax.

A GMU spokesman said there were no complaints from other student religious groups when the Muslim Student Association was given permission by administrators to convert a common third-floor meditation room into a makeshift mosque. Would Campus Crusade for Christ be allowed to turn the facility into a makeshift Resurrection scene? The spokesman acknowledged that the other student religious groups have to reserve rooms or meet off campus when they want to pray together. At another state-supported school in Virginia, The College of William & Mary President Gene Nichol recently agreed to return the cross he had removed last year from the college’s historically Christian chapel only after angry alumni threatened to withhold millions in donations.

The paradox strains logic. Church and state remain firmly separated on campuses where the majority of students are Christian, Jewish or of no faith, but administrators toss the principle right out the window to satisfy a minority of Muslim students.

Hat tip to Instapundit.

Idiotarian alert: Paul Watson calls for a reduction in the earth;s population to 1 billion people

I'm with Glenn on this one, this dude scares me:

Watson’s May 4 editorial asked the question “The Beginning of the End for Life as We Know it on Planet Earth?” Then he left no doubt about the answer. “We are killing our host the planet Earth,” he claimed and called for a population drop to less than 1 billion.

The commentary reminded readers that Watson had called humans a disease before and he wasn’t sorry. “I was once severely criticized for describing human beings as being the ‘AIDS of the Earth.’ I make no apologies for that statement,” the column continued.

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“No human community should be larger than 20,000 people and separated from other communities by wilderness areas.” New York, London, Paris, Moscow are all too big. Then again, so are Moose Jaw, Timbuktu and even Annapolis, Md.

· “We need vast areas of the planet where humans do not live at all and where other species are free to evolve without human interference.”

· “We need to radically and intelligently reduce human populations to fewer than one billion.”

Emphasis mine. That's the part that scares me: how do you radically and "intelligently" reduce the human population to less than 1 billion without resorting to draconian and totalitarian methods? Simple: you don't.

More appeasement from the Western World

As UK teachers refrain from teaching about the Holocaust for fear of offending Muslim students:

The findings have prompted claims that some schools are using history 'as a vehicle for promoting political correctness'.

The study, funded by the Department for Education and Skills, looked into 'emotive and controversial' history teaching in primary and secondary schools.

It found some teachers are dropping courses covering the Holocaust at the earliest opportunity over fears Muslim pupils might express anti-Semitic and anti-Israel reactions in class.

The researchers gave the example of a secondary school in an unnamed northern city, which dropped the Holocaust as a subject for GCSE coursework.

The report said teachers feared confronting 'anti-Semitic sentiment and Holocaust denial among some Muslim pupils'.

It added: "In another department, the Holocaust was taught despite anti-Semitic sentiment among some pupils.

"But the same department deliberately avoided teaching the Crusades at Key Stage 3 (11- to 14-year-olds) because their balanced treatment of the topic would have challenged what was taught in some local mosques."

Nanny state has a voice now

Britain is already one of the most watched nations on earth and now "talking" CCTV cameras are to be installed in 20 areas across the country.

The loudspeakers will allow CCTV operators to bark orders at people committing anti-social behaviour.

Via The Telegraph UK

Competitions are being held at schools in many of the areas for children to become the "voice" of CCTV cameras, Mr Reid said.

"Local communities are rightly fed up with littering and anti-social behaviour - they want to remind people about what is, and is not, respectful behaviour," he said.

"By funding and supporting these local schemes, the Government is encouraging children to send this clear message to grown ups: act anti-socially and you will face the shame of being publicly embarrassed."

According to recent studies, Britain has 4.2million CCTV cameras - one for every 14 people in the country - which amounts to 20 per cent of the global camera total.

All emphasis ours. Cameras watching your every movement in public? Children encouraged to rat on their parents for "anti-social" behavior? And who defines what is "anti-social"? If it sounds like some kind of awful Orwellian nightmare that's because it is.

Hat tip to Pajames Media.

Gore Vs. Reality

We're finding a little more skepticism now, or at least calls to calm down a bit to the right environmental Reverend Al Gore, some even saying that the shrill voice of calamity is muddying the waters and not helping matters.

Excerpt:

(The IPCC) estimated that the world’s seas in this century would rise a maximum of 23 inches — down from earlier estimates. Mr. Gore, citing no particular time frame, envisions rises of up to 20 feet and depicts parts of New York, Florida and other heavily populated areas as sinking beneath the waves, implying, at least visually, that inundation is imminent.

(emphasis and insert added)

Read the whole thing, here.

More, here.

and, here.

A scientific petition with 17,000 signatures against Gore's claim of disaster, here.