AP Wrap Up pt 1

And the nominees for male role model of the year are...

Michael Lohan

Roger Clemens

and this guy


GRAND ISLAND, Neb. (AP) - A 23-year-old man accused of daring
his 5-year-old nephew and a friend to sniff pool chlorine now faces
felony charges.
Juan Pablo Andrade-Escobar had been scheduled to go to trial on
two misdemeanor counts of child abuse. But on Tuesday, the counts
were upgraded to felony child abuse.
Officials say Andrade-Escobar opened a canister of pool chlorine
in July and dared his nephew and a 7-year-old friend of the boy to
smell it.
They did and soon vomited.
The 7-year-old recovered quickly. The younger boy was taken to a
local hospital, then to Children's Hospital in Omaha, where he
remained in critical condition for days.
Inhaling a concentrated doses of chlorine gas can be fatal.

Wow... The parents ought to be ashamed for leaving these kids in the care of an obviously retarded man.

In other news, the Jesus Tribe is on the warpath, working themselves into a self righteous lather with their second attempt to outlaw abortion in the otherwise forward thinking center of humanism that is Souf Dakota...


ABERDEEN, S.D. (AP) - The South Dakota Right to Life state
convention features a doctor who used to perform abortions and the
brother of Terri Schiavo (SHY'-voh) as the main speakers.
Schiavo died in 2005 at the age of 41 after a nationwide debate
over her care. She was diagnosed as being in a persistent
vegetative state after her heart stopped in 1990. Her husband
wanted her feeding tube removed against the wishes of her parents.
Schiavo's brother, Bobby Schindler, now runs a center for health
care ethics.
Also set to speak is Dr. Anthony Levatino of New Mexico, who
plans to tell how he ended his practice of performing abortions.
The convention is scheduled for Oct. 11 in Aberdeen.

What tickles me about this is the inclusion of Terry Schiavo's brother. Is this how he makes extra scratch these days? Touring backwater states and capitalizing on his sister's corpse? He runs a center for health care ethics. The funny thing about ethics is that, sometimes, they are subjective. For example, some people think that pulling Schiavo's feeding tube was tantamount to murder. Other people believe that wasting valuable effort, personnel, and equipment on a vegetable so far past the point of possible recovery that her brain was mostly pudding is unethical. Potato Potato I guess.

I'm in a mood to rip the religious today, and thus far my vitriol has been directed towards Christians. Let's do something about that. Muslims are raising a ruckus all over the place from Minnesota to Nebraska...


WILLMAR, Minn. (AP) - Willmar public school officials are
sticking with their original policy on when to allow Somali
students to pray.
Some Somali parents in Willmar had complained that the public
schools weren't allowing their Muslim children to step out of class
for daily prayer. Some didn't send their children to school last
week in protest.
School officials met with a Somali parent to listen to the
concerns but said they're not changing their policy.
Willmar Junior High School Principal Mark Miley says at a
meeting six years ago, Somali families agreed that their children
could pray during lunch time and between periods. Miley says
everyone at that meeting, including parents, agreed that stepping
out during class to pray would be disruptive.
Muslims observe prayer five times a day. This month, during
Ramadan, the midday prayer falls during class, not lunch time.

Christians lost this battle a long time ago. You still hear far right bitching about getting prayer 'back in schools,' which neglects the fact that prayer has never been kicked out of school. If a child wants to stop before a test to petition the Lord for the correct answers, there is nothing, nothing, that can stop them. What is NOT allowed is mandatory prayer and making a spectacle out of yourself, as the religious have been known to do. As I said the Christians capitulated on this front a long time ago. The Muslims will not go down so easily. They have a knack for imposing their will and culture on their new homelands, as the French and Belgians can tell you. We shall see how this one plays out.

In other Muslim news...


OMAHA, Neb. (AP) - A dispute between Muslim workers and
management at the JBS Swift & Co. plant in Grand Island isn't the
first.
The plant had the same problems last year when Muslim workers
sought accommodations to make their sunset prayer. Dozens of
workers in that dispute quit their jobs in protest. They eventually
returned to work.
Local union president Dan Hoppes says the problem was never
fixed last year. That's one of the reasons he says it emerged again
in recent days.
Hoppes says the current contract doesn't expire until 2010. He
is hopeful that next year, everyone might get out ahead of it and
make adjustments before it becomes an issue again.

Seems as though a reasonable accord was reached here.

Now what needs to be addressed is Somali cooking. When I lived in the Cities, I shared apartment buildings with many Somalis and their cooking smells like garbage and it stinks the whole place up constantly.