Wilson Fu

And those who combine both functions:

Mr. Fu notes two Wal Mart greeter failures in the last three weeks. Crotchety old farts engaged in chatting with other old farts.

Check it out, Adam Somebody over at The Volokh Conspiracy has some very good points.

And made me whole.  Dinesh D’Souza angers several atheists when he questions the lack of atheist participation in the comfort of the grieving. Is D’Souza’s timing a little to close to be asking such questions and really taking advantage of a tragedy?  Perhaps.

Atheist anger is kind of interesting (does the anger serve some evolutionary purpose?).  But there does seem to be a lack of coordinated effort by atheists in humanitarian (snicker*) causes.  Like when was the last time you visited a sick friend in the Atheist Hospital?  Or met a recovering alcoholic whose life was changed by disbelief in a higher power?

Argue what you will about the existence of God, but if you balance the anecdotal evidence of the number of lives positively impacted by atheistic teachings versus those positively impacted by Christian teachings I think far more would pile up on the “God exists” side.  So if God does not exist, why are so many people’s lives changed for the better by a figment of their imagination?

*snicker, from the old line: If vegetarians eat vegetables, what do humanitarians eat?

Your whacked-out psycho-classmate has firearms, how to you propose to stop him?  David Kopel on ‘Gun-Free Zones.’  Cho Seung-Hui picked an unfair fight, so why should he have all the advantages?  What you need is more training.

Just wait until it’s free!  Learn what that means and why.

Stephen F. Hayes on Fred Thompson.

 Sounds like Nifongg’s handling of the stripper rape case nearly incited a mob:

On the same day, Nifong started a media offensive. The News & Observer had broken the story of the team giving DNA samples and then published an interview with Mangum. Activists and neighborhood residents had responded with two protests outside the house where three lacrosse captains lived: a candlelight vigil and a raucous affair where protesters banged pots and held signs that read “Castrate” and “Get a Conscience, Not a Lawyer.”

There are many lessons to be re-enforced and many unseemly behaviors seen in this story.  Lessons to be re-enforced: 1) “innocent until proven guilty” protects the accused, 2) for “innocent until proven guilty” to avoid a mob scene the populace needs to be confident that justice will be done, 3) prosecutors and defense counsel should be compelled to keep their mouths shut until a public trial, 4) if you lay down with dogs, you get up with fleas, in that if the accused had not been attending a party characterized with such ill conceived activities as hiring strippers, then there would have been far less opportunity for them to be accused of rape.

Unseemly behaviors: 1) abusing a position of authority for personal gain, in Nifong trying to use this case to boost his election campaign, 2) class envy in assuming the accused were guilty by virtue of their socio-economic status, 3) the assumption that the accuser was truthful without a complete investigation being completed, 4) mob actions of intimidation and disturbing the peace.

There are more issues involved here, but these are enough to consider for some time.

Frank J. seems to like Fred, a lot!

As terrorists in Iraq continue to employ WMDs, there is still no apology from the Democrats for their poor intelligence work in stating that there are no WMDs in Iraq.  Not that Mr. Fu is surprised by this lack of apology.  But Mr. Fu wonders when the UN will condemn this latest violation of the Geneva Convention.

Given the last round of Iranian piracy against the Royal Navy and the underwhelming condemnation of the same, Mr. Fu wonders if the popularity of Pirates of the Caribbean had anything to do with the ho-hum reaction?  Pirates are romantic figures now, not savage brigands dealing in death and blunder.  Mr. Fu expects we will be seeing more Iranians with eye patches now.

Mr. Fu cannot be the only one that thought some romanticized Teddy Roosevelt response would have been better.  An ultimatum of return of the hostages in four hours or else.  And then the or else was a complete bombardment of all oil fields, processing facilities, and refineries, plus the mining of all Iranian ports and the sinking of all Iranian ships at sea.  And then a politely phrased request like, “Would you give our people back now, please?”

As Churchill said, “When you have to kill a man it costs nothing to be polite.”