I recognize that Islam is made up of people and that some will be violent by nature and some will be peacful by nature and that both groups can find justification in their Koran for their violent or peaceful nature. It’s the same with my religion, Christianity. I also recognize that when outsiders point out certain things about one’s religion that isn’t so pretty that it’s real easy to get defensive.

Getting defensive is one thing. Getting violent is something else completely.

AN ITALIAN nun was killed by gunmen at a children’s hospital in Somalia yesterday in an apparent revenge attack for the Pope’s speech about Islam last week.

The Pope reads a passage from a 600 year old text that states that Islam is inherently violent and the response from some muslims is to prove the point? I’ve got to ask, what is everyone thinking? On top of this you also have Anjem Choudary over in London seeking the death penalty for the Pope and anyone else who insults Islam. What is all this suppose to make me think about Islam?

I need a new catagory, “Things I just don’t understand.”

* This post can also be found here in the forums.*

On the way into work this morning traffic was horrible so I had the opportunity to listen to several local radio shows. The subject of the day was Jennifer Wilbanks and what should be done to her. Now in my opinion this lady is a nutcase whose family ought to shun for a while and her fiancé should consider this a lesson learned and go on to find the next love of his life. However, talks of criminal prosecution of her are way out of line.

While disappering without leaving an explanation behind is cruel to family and friends I don’t see that an adult going off without telling anyone is or should be a criminal act. Gwinnett County prosecutor Danny Porter appears to be looking for something to charge the woman with but the only thing I’ve heard him come up with so far is filing a false report and lying to investigators, one a misdemeanor and the other a felony. However, I beleive she confessed to what really happened before talking to any Gwinnett County officials and both Albequrque and federal officials have both said no charges would be forthcoming from them. I don’t see where Danny Porter has jurisdiction here.

Duluth is complaining about the money spent on overtime for officers working on the search. They are also complaining about the operational cost of the helicopter brought in to assist with the search. Some people took a day off from work to aid in searching for the lady. This search was rolling on full force within just a few hours of Jennifer’s disapperance. I thought a teenager or adult had to be missing for 24 hours before this type of a search was mounted. I guess when your future father-in-law is the one time mayor of the small Georgia town that policy tends to change.

Nah, the talk about charging her with a crime isn’t right.We don’t need to make it a criminal offense to disappear without notification. She will be punished by the way people treat her from now on. She’ll probably find that moving to Albequrque isn’t such a bad idea.

In a comment to the original post Dan points us to the Steven’s Creek Parents website. Yeah, there really is more to the story.

A Gainesville, Florida man has been arrested for biting his Jack Russell terrier as punishment. Punishment for what the article didn’t say but it did mention that he had a 200 pound bull mastiff that he used to keep police at bay when they came to try to arrest him.

I would place money on it that he didn’t use the same discipline technique with the bull mastiff.

I’m hoping that one of my Bay Area friends can shed some light on the Cupertino school banning the Declaration of Independence. There has to be more to this than is being reported.

Okay, what do you call Jell-O shots with no alcohol?

The answer is “Jell-O”.

In Jefferson Parish, Louisiana an 8-year-old gets suspended for bringing Jell-O to school. She brought enough for the entire class so it wasn’t because she didn’t bring enough to share because she brought thirty individual containers of the snack. No, the reason she was suspended was because the containers she was serving them in resembled the Jell-O shots you can get in some bars.

The girl was suspended for nine days for two violations of the system’s drug policy: having a “look-alike” drug on school grounds and intending to distribute it, Nowakowski said.

I wonder what Bill Cosby has to say about this?

Warkitty pointed me to the Missionary Dating Ministry Web Page. Okaaaay,…. it’s an interesting concept and one that I can understand in the abstract but in practice I’m not so sure this is going to work out the way this girl thinks it’s going to work out.

Or maybe it will.

Dan brought this to my attention and it reminded me of how purposeful and single minded a child can be. When they relate to something it takes a lot to make multiple connections to things and symbols. In this case the beauty that can be seen in the female form only means one thing to a young child…. dinner.

I don’t understand it. It isn’t something that appeals to me but I fail to see why anyone would have a problem with a man that wants to sit around his home…, or a friends home for that matter, dressed in women’s clothes. Yeah, I’ll chuckle at the behavior but it isn’t hurting me any. So why would I care if it was something a politician was into. Apparently one politician is not succumbing to the blackmail.

Since yesterday there have been three news stories that I’ve seen about people confessing to crimes after seeing Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of Jesus Christ” movie.

• A Texas man has been prompted by Mel Gibson’s Passion film to confess he killed his girlfriend, a police spokesman has said.

• A man in Norway has confessed to two bombings, which occurred ten years ago, after watching Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ”. 41-year-old Johnny Olsen confessed to bombings that were targeted against anarchist squatters in Oslo.

• MESA, Ariz. - A 20-year-old man confessed to a half dozen burglaries, saying he felt guilty after seeing the movie “The Passion of the Christ.”

Regardless of what the critics are saying, law enforcement officials ought to consider showing this movie in holding cells.

So you think the economy is sucky in the US? Just be glad you aren’t a Bavarian yoddler. Their lederhosen subsidy has just been cut leaving them without shorts to get in a wad over.

If you are a property owner of a ten-story building and have a leak in the winter on the roof causing a large accumulation of ice, you’d best take care of the problem. A New York couple is suing the owner of such a building owner over just such a problem. It seems that a three hundred pound chunk of ice broke loose from the ten story building next door and crashed through the roof of their third story apartment and landed in their bed while they were relaxing, reading the paper and sipping their coffee. Not something you expect on a leisurely Saturday morning. There was around seven hundred more pounds of ice waiting to break loose from where the last icicle came from.

And….

For those of you that love irony, the porn film director James DiGiorgio is teaming up with a Christian anti-pornography group to create a public service announcement with the message, "Parents, keep your adult videos and magazines out of the ands of your children." The PSA is being filmed for XXXChurch.com. I’ve got to say this guy must be doing the right thing because the project is drawing scorn from fans of pornography, who object to the criticism, and the religious right, who are complaining about the willingness of the sponsors to consort with pornographers.

About the only thing that last Sunday’s march in support of nudity in Daytona, Florida accomplished was giving us a neat quote. Organizers expected thousands of women to march topless through the streets of Daytona but only fifty showed up and only one, Liz Book, the organizer, bared her breasts. She was promptly whisked off to jail.

"I don’t ever want to see another woman arrested because someone showed her breasts," said Book, a 42-year-old Brownie troop leader. "Our breasts are not criminal."

No, breasts are not criminal.