The war on abstinence and traditional morality hits a fever pitch--NOT

It's "war on Christmas" time again, folks. And, in that spirit, an off-his-rocker social conservative has once again manufactured "liberal hostility" to his belief system. A hostility that simply doesn't exist.

It turns out that a Princeton student and Anscombe Society member, Francisco Nava, sent anonymous "threats" to himself and fellow members of the pro-abstinence society. Nava then faked being beaten for his outspoken moral conservatism by two masked men. (Daily Prince, NYT)

Clearly, this poor dude is unbalanced. But it is significant how his mental issues manifested themselves. Nava's hoax reimagined the subtle, systemic, and indifferent forces of gradual social change as brazen, focused forces that mean harm.

It really reminds me of the fundamental group psychosis of the "war on Christmas" people: because many people don't want religious values and ceremonies imposed by the government or other public institutions, they imagine that those same people are out to get Christmas. Because society couldn't become more secular (pluralistic, in my view) all on its lonesome, could it?

As Princeton's current student president told the New York Times,

"I don't think Princeton is the kind of place where students would be threatened or physically harmed for what they believe...Something about it didn't seem quite right because I couldn't see a Princeton student being so vehemently opposed to something their classmate said as to be compelled to physical violence."

By the way, here's what FOX news wrote before the hoax was revealed as such:

Little Outrage Over Student Beating at Princeton University
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
By Brit Hume

Conservative students and faculty at Princeton University are questioning the absence of campus and community outrage -- following the beating of a student leading a morality movement at the school. The New York Sun reports Francisco Nava was attacked by two men last week and told to shut up. The beating came two days after Nava received death threats by e-mail.

Lieberman endorses McCain; McCain uses awful new word

"I was a little reluctant to ask him, because I didn't want him to do something that may cause any harm to his political future," McCain told reporters in Concord. "I felt it would be impactful in the election otherwise I wouldn't ask for it." (NBC First Read)

Ugh, impactful? That is even worse than the use of "impact" as a verb. Please do not use this word, English speakers.

Marion Jones, Olympic medalist*

I.O.C. Formally Strips Jones of Five Medals From Sydney Games

LAUSANNE, Switzerland (AP)--The International Olympic Committee formally stripped [sprinter] Marion Jones of her five Olympic medals Wednesday, wiping her name from the record books after her admission that she was a drug cheat.

Sad. But cheaters never win. Except in baseball.

Welcome to the Twilight Zone, I mean, Iowa

In Iowa, Mitt Romney has launched a campaign to, in the words of Chris Cillizza, "redefine former Gov. Mike Huckabee (Ark.) as too liberal for the voters of Iowa."

He has a shot. Conservatives like Bob Novak are already pointing to Huckabee's relatively liberal record on fiscal policy, and the new Romney ad campaign highlights some of Huckabee's positions on immigration as governor.

But what I think is really interesting about this ad is how it hides the threats to Romney's social-conservative credentials in plain sight. The ad points to conservative positions on abortion and gay marriage as two points of similarity between Romney and Huckabee, sweeping under the rug Romney's flip-flopping on choice and previous opposition to constitutional gay marriage bans for Massachusetts and for the U.S.

WTF is going on out there in the Wild Wild Mideast?

A Houston, Texas woman says she was gang-raped by Halliburton/KBR coworkers in Baghdad, and the company and the U.S. government are covering up the incident.

Jamie Leigh Jones, now 22, says that after she was raped by multiple men at a KBR camp in the Green Zone, the company put her under guard in a shipping container with a bed and warned her that if she left Iraq for medical treatment, she'd be out of a job.

"Don't plan on working back in Iraq. There won't be a position here, and there won't be a position in Houston," Jones says she was told.

In a lawsuit filed in federal court against Halliburton and its then-subsidiary KBR, Jones says she was held in the shipping container for at least 24 hours without food or water by KBR, which posted armed security guards outside her door, who would not let her leave. (ABC News)

These allegations have not been proven--although apparently Army doctors determined she had been raped--but I'm pretty inclined to believe them. Would the same type of people who would mow down innocent civilians blink an eye at drugging and gang raping a woman in a situation where no laws really apply?

Beautiful irony

Heh. Turns out that Nobel-prize-winning DNA discoverer (and notable racist) James Watson is about 16 percent African, according to an analysis of his genome. (UK Independent)

On a related note, there was an interesting op-ed in the NYT yesterday about the science behind the race/environment/IQ debate.

Morgan Spurlock hunts for Osama bin Laden on film

Because if anyone's going to move quietly through Middle Eastern terrorist culture and get a shot at finding him, it's a 6-foot, Anglo, West Virginian vegan. (NYT)

Winter lives

Yay! Snow!

War is peace! Freedom is slavery! Ignorance is strength!

Like Iraq, US Intel on Iran Faulty

WASHINGTON -- First Iraq, now Iran. The United States has operated under a cloud of faulty intelligence in both countries. In a bombshell intelligence assessment, the United States has backed away from its once-ironclad assertion that Tehran is intent on building nuclear bombs. (AP via WP)

Right-O.

Bush: Iran Intelligence Report is Warning Signal

President Bush asserted today that Iran's nuclear program remains a danger to international security despite an assessment in a new U.S. intelligence report that the Tehran government stopped work four years ago on a suspected effort to build nuclear weapons. (WP)

Uh huh.

Mr. President,

People don't buy this BS anymore.

(I hope?)

Washington wins in walkability

The Brookings Institution ranks Washington, DC the #1 most walkable metro area in the country. (CNN)

Let's add that to the running list of reasons to overlook the climate and the housing market and live in this great city.

No one ever posts "is shopping for sex toys on the internet" as their Facebook status

You have to wonder how business proposals like this make it through dozens of people without raising any red flags.

Sean Lane's purchase was supposed to be a surprise for his wife. Then it appeared as a news headline -- "Sean Lane bought 14k White Gold 1/5 ct Diamond Eternity Flower Ring from overstock.com" -- last week on the social networking Web site Facebook.

Without Lane's knowledge, the headline was visible to everyone in his online network, including [h]is wife.

The wraps came off his Christmas gift thanks to a new advertising feature called Beacon, which shares news of Facebook members' online purchases with their friends. The idea, according to the company, is to allow merchants to effectively turn millions of Facebook users into a "word-of-mouth promotion" service. (WP)

Let it be clear that there was no opt-in involved in this situation, and users were in no way informed about this ahead of time. After Facebook users organized in opposition to the policy, Facebook quickly dropped the original Beacon plan.

I imagine this was a case in which "millennial" staff saw no problem with a level of online exhibitionism that would appall most people born before 1980. (And probably quite a few born after). Bizarre.

Sean Lane should take comfort in the fact that it could have been a lot worse. At least he got caught doing something sweet for a loved one and not something else. Imagine the possibilities.