Editor’s Note: Although the following post was written solely by "TexasTommy", I’ve decided to repost it with a "screaming headline" and endorse it as an official LST editorial.

I read with angst this story about the Klu Klux Klan holding a rally on Saturday, November 5 at Austin City Hall (what a perfect combination: the state’s most dysfunctional group at the state’s most dysfunctional building).

The pointy-hatted band of merrymakers will be holding forth in favor of proposition 2, the Texas Marriage Amendment. This event “for” proposition 2 may be the best PR weapon the heretofore inept anti-prop. 2 campaign has yet acquired.

I am for proposition 2 for a number of reasons. But, I am grieved that the KKK has insinuated itself into the prop. 2 debate. Here is a group whose website endeavors "to warn of the dangers of interracial mixing", sullies the name of Jesus Christ with racism, proffers anti-semitism, scathingly and revoltingly disapproves of interracial marriage, and resembles left-wing blogs that launch racist attacks against black conservatives.

Their rhetoric is a restless evil, full of deadly poison and is itself set on fire by hell. It is the embodiment of the foulest and most soul-destroying hatreds that has ever darkened and stained the pages of the web. With their tongues, they praise our Lord and Father, and with it they curse men, who have been made in God’s likeness.

I am saddened that the KKK has decided to go forward with this event, which will erroneously associate the reputation and philosophy of the KKK with the otherwise moral and sensible proposition 2. I pray that God would send a thunderstorm to prevent this event from happening.

Fans of LST will recall that we’ve closely followed the Numa Numa Saga as it progressed from Internet novelty to mainstream pop culture to Edd Hendee’s morning show. Well we’re still on the ball, closely monitoring the Internet’s disturbingly prolific dancing scene. Here are the late-breaking developments:

• More Numa, bird flu-style, thanks to an anonymous tip from Squawkbox.
• Two Chinese Backstreet Boys, via MeMo.
• Officer down! Well, officer getting down, anyway.

Have a good weekend, folks.

I’ve been reading with great distress of the riots by young Muslims in Parisian suburbs, now spreading to other parts of the country. Last November, I blogged on the dramatic demographic shifts in old Europe and their portent for coming strife. Back then I said,

"The Muslim worldview (at least the more strident flavor which seems to be in effect in most Mid East nations) assumes there is a Supreme Being and that this being directs followers to spread the faith, by violent means, if necessary. People adhering to passive, "Live and let live" secularism simply have no ethical basis or spiritual strength to resist determined fanatics. Europe must return to the loving and powerful God of the Bible and the Great Commission zeal of the Lord Jesus Christ to forestall a dark future. "

Now, nearly a year hence, the darkness is upon France’s doorstep and it grieves me greatly. Like other conservatives, I’ve occassionally joked about French passivity and double dealing. But I take no pleasure in the spectacle that is now unfolding across the pond. I pray this will spark a revival and return to the true God of the Universe by our Old World kin.

Dieu Protege La France!

Postscript: On the topic of radical Islam, Victor Davis Hansen once again nails it. Money quote:

"Meanwhile, Westerners far too rarely publicly denounce radical Islam for its sick, anti-Semitic, anti-female, anti-American, and anti-modernist rhetoric. "

You don’t say? Denouncing radical Islam would require a moral standard against which to judge it and the moral strength to announce said judgment. We need to regain the moral clarity to call a spade a spade. But where can such moral vigor be found? Read the whole post.

ESCAPED.

Sorry I haven’t gotten to this before now, but there’s an escaped murderer on the streets, and he has nothing to lose:

Authorities continued to scour downtown Houston and the surrounding areas late Thursday for a death row convict who used a fake badge and a change of clothes to walk out of the Harris County Jail’s Baker Street facility.

Charles Victor Thompson, 35, convicted in the shooting deaths of his ex-girlfriend and her boyfriend in 1998, escaped about 3:30 p.m. while being held inside the high-security J Pod unit at the County Jail at 1200 Baker, officials said.

Thompson, described as 5′ 11" and weighing approximately 230 pounds, was last seen wearing a dark blue shirt, khaki pants and white tennis shoes.

Sheriff’s officials said Thompson may be in a gray-colored 2003 Nissan Frontier truck with Texas license plate 8WLX62. The truck is listed in an online database of motor vehicle records as belonging to his father, Stephen R. Thompson III, 59, of Tomball.

He’s also got a hit list. On a completely unrelated note, I found a sweet "intelligent bullet" the other day.

Steven Green of VodkaPundit points out a story in the Sacramento Bee:

Mendocino County women who have been baring their breasts at various venues to protest the war in Iraq are in Sacramento federal court seeking an order prohibiting the California Highway Patrol from arresting them during a planned noon demonstration Monday at the Capitol.

The women’s group, Breasts Not Bombs, is suing CHP Commissioner Mike Brown and two of his officers over a warning that if the women demonstrate while topless, they will be arrested and charged with indecent exposure and disorderly conduct.

And now for some VodkaPunditry:

Seriously, though, the police need to cool it - and the women need a buy a clue. If they wonder why a misogynist culture wants to blow up Americans, maybe someday they’ll understand that protests like these are part of the reason.

Me, I’m a big fan of breasts. Which is why the answer is and must be "boobs and bombs."

Amen.

It looks like Cuban dictator Fidel Castro is trying to buy off Latin American democracies and convert them into fellow socialist paradises, according to Investor’s Business Daily:

Brazilians are rightly angry over allegations of illegal campaign donations from Fidel Castro. True or not, they coincide with an alarming weakness in foreign policy that benefits the Cuban dictator.

Was there a connection? We wonder for two reasons. First, Castro in recent years has aggressively sought influence across Latin America on a scale not seen since the 1960s. Second, Brazil has been oddly passive in response.

We’ve already noted how Castro has cranked up pork-barrel spending in Brazil’s neighbor, Bolivia, in the heat of its own presidential campaign. The largess is conditioned on votes for Castro’s favored candidate, Evo Morales, who wants to nationalize Bolivia’s energy.

If Morales wins, the biggest victim of his expropriations will be Brazil’s state oil firm, Petrobras, which supplies a major part of Brazil’s economic powerhouse, the Sao Paulo region, with natural gas. Petrobras’ investment is so large it makes up 20% of Bolivia’s economy.

With its interests threatened, Brazil should have the diplomatic muscle to force Castro and his allies to back off. But for some reason, it’s held back, choosing silence when what’s required is leadership.

I know we’ve got some astute oil types and risk-analyst types in the crowd. What do y’all think? I know this sounds scary, but how plausible is it?

[Hat-tip: Byron]

Ladies and gentlemen, I just came across an amazingly great t-shirt that y’all desperately need to see buy for me:

He kinda looks like Benzion.

Here’s the text:

Oh hell yes. Anyone who would like to reward my long hours, hard work and single-minded diligence on behalf of the voiceless, feel free to email me. In addition to t-shirts, I also accept alcohol, tobacco and firearms.

This is pretty huge:

House Republicans are looking closely at ending birthright citizenship and building a barrier along the entire U.S.-Mexico border as they search for solutions to illegal immigration.

"There is a general agreement about the fact that citizenship in this country should not be bestowed on people who are the children of folks who come into this country illegally," said Rep. Tom Tancredo, Colorado Republican, who is participating in the "unity dinners," the group of Republicans trying to find consensus on immigration.

Amen to that! However, they’re going to try and change this by statute. Seems to me that the 14th amendment is pretty clear:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States

But we’re still — unfortunately — in the very early stages of this debate, so we’ll see how it pans out. Meanwhile, Republicans are also kicking around the idea of a border fence or other barrier:

At this week’s "unity dinner," House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, Illinois Republican, said he supports a barrier system of fences in some places and electronic surveillance or vehicle barriers in others, one participant said.

Mr. Hastert’s spokesman said the speaker would not talk about the private meetings.

Come on, Mr. Speaker! This is the kind of bold initiative that Republican voters want! They don’t want to see wishy-washy "we’ll look into it" proposals. They want decisive action! At least put a mention about the idea on your little blog!

I know it’s dated, but Matt Bramanti just found this response from a Harvard Crimson writer to a post of mine from early this year concerning the paper’s editorial position on “Dormaid,” a student-run maid service (essentially, they argued that it was divisive — widening the gap between rich and poor students):

Published on Thursday, March 17, 2005
Gadfly: The Week in Buzz

We had Dormaid back in the day…we called it Mom.

By MICHAEL M. GRYNBAUM
Crimson Staff Writer

LONELY STAR

The “Lone Star Times” – motto: “A blog as big as Texas” – has got its cowboy britches all in a knot, hootin’ and hollerin’ over the Crimson editorial condemning Michael E. Kopko ’07’s proposed Dormaid service. “This is nothing short of Marxist horse dung,” drawl the bloggers, arguing that our fair paper “attacks entrepreneurship” (hey…isn’t that a French word you just used?!).

Silly Southerners. If they’d paid more attention to Marx and those other “bookish types,” they’d know that blogs don’t have a physical presence in the traditional spatial or temporal sense. In fact, you could say they’re like, infinite, making them even bigger than Texas. (P.S. Seriously folks, we love the South. Just yankin’ the ol’ chain.)

Okkkk….. I really have no response to this. How ’bout y’all?

The Chronicle has a column from Ellen Goodman slamming Alito’s dissent in Casey. This merits a good fisking:

The collision came over Alito’s opinion in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, a case that is becoming the most famous entry in his dossier. The Pennsylvania Legislature had written a slew of restrictions on abortion. But when the law reached the 3rd Circuit appeals court, Alito was the only member who upheld the requirement that a woman must tell her husband before she had an abortion.

Alito argued that most women told their husbands anyway. He brushed aside the idea that this requirement would be a burden on women with abusive husbands. With a wink, a nod and a footnote, he even implied that the law would be easy to get around, “difficult to enforce and easy to evade.”

His argument said more than that. Alito pointed out that the law provided an exception for cases where there was a potential for domestic violence. Why would Goodman ignore that, hmm? Sometimes a stategic ommission is the equivalent of a lie. This strikes me as one of those cases.

The day the case was heard by the Supreme Court, O’Connor cut straight to the heart of the mandated marital talk. If a state could require a woman to notify her husband, she asked, why not her boyfriend or any other man? If a woman had to notify a man before an abortion, could she also be forced to notify a man before intercourse? “Could the state do that?” Where exactly did a woman’s rights end and state rule begin?

The Supreme Court wasn’t asked whether or not the state could require a woman to notify “her boyfriend or any other man.” The question was whether or not a requirement that a woman notify her husband before having an abortion constituted an “undue burden” on her right to have an abortion. The fact that the law was limited in scope was actually a step in its favor. In any case, other possible notification requirments were not before the court, and were thus irrelevant. That O’Connor started talking chicken little just goes to show what a lousy justice she was.

Moreover, the Court in Casey upheld the parental notification requirment. It makes no more sense to say “If a state could require a girl to notify her parents, why not her grandparents or any other relation?” Goodman’s argument simply fails.

…O’Connor understood instinctively the relationship between a woman’s right to decide and her individual liberty. The opinion she wrote with Justices Anthony Kennedy and David Souter said that “the liberty of the woman is at stake in a sense unique to the human condition, and so, unique to the law. … The destiny of the woman must be shaped to a large extent on her own conception of her spiritual imperatives and her place in society.”

Here we have it. A philosophical argument. A moral argument. The constitution says nothing about abortion, but Goodman, O’Connor, and their ilk feel strongly about it, and that alone is a justification for establishing it as a “liberty” for women. The problem is that we don’t let individuals impose their own moral standards when they affect others. So long as Goodman doesn’t recognize that another human life is involved, she’ll never be able to discuss the issue with any level of competence or understanding.

Let’s hear from French president Jacques Chirac on the Muslim punks who are hard at work burning Paris:

"Please, stop zee violence! We surrendare!"

Thanks, Jacques.

It’s Friday!

Comments are open!

Food for thought:

• IMOA suggests admitting a Quagmire.  I think he is right,,,,, you may want to check it out;
• Riots in Paris: what do you think? Will it interfere in any of your travel plans? Predictable?
• President Bush is in Argentina.  Good? Bad? Indifferent?

Have a great day!