Christian bakers have to bake gay wedding cakes, but Muslim truckers don't have to transport alcohol. Gotcha.
I'm sure Anthony Kennedy can explain it, but wouldn't it be quicker just to load America onto the truck and drive it off the cliff?
Then again, if you're a senior bureaucrat with the IRS and you regard conservatives as the spawn of Satan, you have complete freedom of conscience to screw them over as you wish.
~Every day the papers are full of stories that would have seemed extraordinary 20 years ago but are now depressingly routine. For example:
A rabbi and two of his congregants were stabbed outside a synagogue in Marseilles, France.
One of the victims in the Saturday-morning attack was stabbed several times in the abdomen and is in serious but not life-threatening condition, the French daily Le Figaro reported.
Police arrested the assailant, who shouted anti-Semitic epithets at the victims and reportedly was drunk at the time of the attack. According to Le Figaro, the assailant is known to local police and is considered mentally unstable.
Well, maybe. But he shouted "Allahu Akbar!" and "Itbah al-Yahud!" ("Kill the Jews!") So how exactly do you tell the difference between a "mentally unstable" "drunk" and a healthy, well-adjusted Jew-hating Muslim? Ask Germany's "security experts":
Germany's security experts have rounded on the country's leader, Chancellor Angela Merkel, warning that her immigration policy will "produce extremists", and stating that the country is importing "Islamist extremism, Arab anti-Semitism, [and] national and ethnic conflicts of other nations".
For the most part, the Continental media are content to downplay stabbed Jews. But what happens when all the Jews are dead or fled, and there's no one left to stab but Pierre and Fritz?
Oh, don't worry. They're all rigorously processed:
An immigrant who sexually assaulted a woman within two weeks of arriving in Britain is blocking attempts to deport him by claiming he is a Syrian refugee.
Abdulrahman Abunasir submitted a claim for asylum while serving an 18-month prison sentence for the sex attack.
But when immigration officials questioned him, they found he could not even answer 'simple' questions about Syria.
Don't worry. I'm sure the European Court of Human Rights will rule it's grossly discriminatory to ask a "Syrian" "refugee" to name the capital of Syria.
As I say, Europe's daily papers would read oddly to any visitor from the Back to the Future mid-Eighties. Yet the EU's bigshots - Merkel and Hollande - betray no sense of crisis. That's left to the bit players:
Slovenian Prime Minister Miro Cerar said his tiny Alpine nation was being overwhelmed by the refugees -- with 60,000 arriving in the last 10 days -- and was not receiving enough help from its EU partners.
He put the challenge in simple terms: if no fresh approach is forthcoming "in the next few days and weeks, I do believe that the European Union and Europe as a whole will start to fall apart."
Oh.
~I'll be joining Sean Hannity on Fox News tonight. Clinton Chappell of Melbourne, Victoria is looking forward to it:
Talking politics with Sean Hannity? Newsflash Mark...you don't talk politics with Sean, you just appear on his show and embarrassingly agree with everything he says to you.
He puts questions to you in the form of statements and you agree with him absolutely every single time. Why is that Mark? Are you afraid of not being asked back on his show?
It really is embarrassing Mark. Be your own man. I cringe everytime I see you on TV. "That's right Sean". Then the "I agree with you Sean". How many times can you do that in 8 minutes?
The answer is...nobody can do it as often or as embarrassingly as you. Be your own man Mark.
Clint Chappell
Melbourne
That's right, Clint. I agree with you.
~Also by way of reader mail, Bush SuperPacster Mike Murphy writes:
Mark,
Lots of opinions in your Jeb piece I disagree with, but this note concerns two howling factual errors: I did not work for Mitt Romney in either of his Presidential campaigns. I ran his race for Governor in MA.I worked for McCain in 2000, in the primaries. I did not work for his Presidential campaign in 2008.
Regards,
Mike Murphy
Well, I could quibble, but you know me, so: That's right, Mike. I agree with you.
~One more from the mailbag:
Since you are fantastically well versed in music of all sorts, could you possibly recall the name of a British musical circa late fifties, early '60's about prostitutes and their pimps that had a song in it called "The Student Ponce"? It was very funny and had some really clever songs and routines.
Thanks,
Gen Rucker
That would be a song by dear old Lionel Bart, about whom I was reminiscing just the other day. The show is called Fings Ain't Wot They Used T'Be - which they certainly aren't, not in Lionel's old Jewish East End.
Nor are they in Yemen: In 1967, the title song of Fings Ain't Wot They Used T'Be was amusingly played by the band of the Royal Marines as the Union Jack was lowered in Aden and the last British troops departed. If there was any interesting musical accompaniment to the recent American evacuation from Aden, I've yet to hear of it.
By the way, I miss the word "ponce". Lionel Bart used it to me, and so did Christine Keeler.
