"... My best friend is {insert minority here}!"

The Dallas Cowboys coach was talking to reporters at the team's minicamp about how his quarterbacks coach and defensive coordinator try to outdo each other when he made the comment, perhaps a reference to Japan's 1941 surprise attack on Pearl Harbor.

"You've got to keep an eye on those two, because they're going to try to get the upper hand," Parcells said about quarterbacks coach Sean Payton and defensive coordinator Mike Zimmer. "Mike wants the defense to do well, and Sean, he's going to have a few ... no disrespect for the Orientals, but what we call Jap plays. OK. Surprise things."

After a murmur in the room of reporters, which included a Japanese journalist, Parcells repeated, "No disrespect to anyone."

"Bill Parcells is a brilliant coach," John Tateishi of the Japanese-American Citizen's League, a national civil rights group told DallasNews.com. "Unfortunately, he is ignorant about racial slurs. I take great offense by what he said. Parcells ought to know better. He sorely needs more education on what is offensive and non-offensive to Japanese-Americans. I am shocked that he would say this."

Parcells apologizes after using racial slur

(no subject)

Someone brought up The Da Vinci Code yesterday, and another person said, "That's a bad book! I'm not reading that!"

I turned to that person and asked, "You don't happen to be Catholic, do you?"

"Yes, I am," she said, perhaps taken aback.

I don't mean to be a religious bigot here, but I don't understand why Catholics take such offense to that book, but I don't hear much grumbling from Protestant circles.

Just an observation.

I think they've got it backwards.

The Pentagon report uses language very similar to that in the 2002 Justice Department memo written in response to the CIA's request: "If a government defendant were to harm an enemy combatant during an interrogation in a manner that might arguably violate criminal prohibition, he would be doing so in order to prevent further attacks on the United States by the al Qaeda terrorist network," the draft states. "In that case, DOJ [Department of Justice] believes that he could argue that the executive branch's constitutional authority to protect the nation from attack justified his actions."

Memo offered justification for use of torture


They might as well have tacked on "necessarily" to the end of that first statement. It's utterly implied.

I fear this fuzzy logic.

(no subject)

Reagan: A Contrary View

The article is good

A "less cramped" view of torture

( but this comment is good, too )

quoted at length for your pleasure

Faith, Divined

Confess to Steven Reiss how important eating, exercise and vengeance are to you, and he can divine the role religion plays in your life.

Reiss, an Ohio State University professor of psychology and psychiatry, said these and 13 other "sensitivity points" -- a set of values held to different degrees by nearly everybody -- can predict not only whether a person is likely to be religious but also what form that belief may take.

He describes his theory in the June issue of Zygon: Journal of Religion & Science, which publishes peer-reviewed research.

( Read more... )

(no subject)

Yay! My Amazon order finally shipped. Too bad it won't get here until next month.

Should've opted out of SUPER SAVER shipping.