Headlines for November 17, 2014

It's cold, rainy, and foggy out there today. Good Scottish weather.

I was going to have a trial today, but the case settled just before we started picking a jury. Consequently, you get a blog post. (Lucky you!)

Looking around, here are some of the headlines that caught my attention today and over the weekend:

1. South Carolina beat Florida in overtime which got the Florida head coach fired. What's really interesting is whether South Carolina will now offer the former Florida head coach a job as a defensive assistant.

2. A doctor who was transported from West Africa to a Nebraska hospital has died of ebola. Apparently, he got to the US just recently, and it looks like he was in a pretty advanced stage of the disease before he got here.

3. One of the scientists who helped land the Rosetta probe on a comet wore a shirt that offended some people. If you're over 13 and offended by someone's shirt, you're a weak-minded moron. Get a grip, people. It's a shirt. You people are worse than the preacher in Footloose.

Other than that, what else you got?

New York Lefty Is Exposed to Guns and Finds He Kind of Digs Them

This post is for people who don't like guns. This post is for people who think that gun owners are idiots or hicks. This post is for people who think that gun owners are absolutely wacko.

Lots of y'all who read this blog are gun people. I'm not making this post for you. Go find another webpage. For instance, you gun folks might like this. (I did.)

I may be a New York lefty—with all the experiences, prejudices and attitudes that one would expect to come along with that, but I do NOT believe that we will reduce gun violence—or reach any kind of consensus—by shrieking at each other. Gun owners—the vast majority of them I have met—are NOT idiots. They are NOT psychos. They are not even necessarily Republican (New Mexico, by the way, is a Blue State). They are not hicks, right wing “nuts” or necessarily violent by nature. And if “we” have any hope of ever changing anything in this country in the cause of reason—and the safety of our children—we should stop talking about a significant part of our population as if they were lesser, stupider or crazier than we are.

You can read the whole thing here. Go do it.

You're All Conservatives Now

Dan Henninger had a good piece in the WSJ about the current intolerance on college campuses today.

Berkeley's [former chancellor] Mr. Birgeneau is famous as an ardent defender of minority students, the LGBT community and undocumented illegal immigrants. What could possibly be wrong with this guy speaking at Haverford??? Haverfordians were upset that in 2011 the Berkeley police used "force" against Occupy protesters in Sproul Plaza. They said Mr. Birgeneau could speak at Haverford if he agreed to nine conditions, including his support for reparations for the victims of Berkeley's violence.

In a letter, Mr. Birgeneau replied, "As a longtime civil rights activist and firm supporter of nonviolence, I do not respond to untruthful, violent verbal attacks."

Smith president Kathleen McCartney felt obliged to assert that she is "committed to leading a college where differing views can be heard and debated with respect." And Haverford's president, Daniel Weiss, wrote to the students that their demands "read more like a jury issuing a verdict than as an invitation to a discussion or a request for shared learning."

Mr. Birgeneau, Ms. McCartney, Mr. Weiss and indeed many others in American academe must wonder what is happening to their world this chilled spring.

Here's the short explanation: You're all conservatives now.

I guess students today feel like they have to protest something.

h/t Brad W.

Joe Biden to Speak at USC Commencement

And no one is making a big deal about it. Because it's not a big deal.

I guess that means that USC is more enlightened and tolerant than Rutgers.

Mozilla CEO Forced To Resign Because of His Personal Beliefs

Mozilla's CEO has resigned, due to public pressure for him do to so.

Now, what could have been so horrible of a personal belief that he was forced to resign from the company that he helped found? Was he a closet-Nazi? Did he believe in aliens? Was he a devil worshipper? Did he belong to the KKK?

No, it wasn't any of these. Apparently, he was driven out of his job - essentially fired - because he had the audacity to donate $1,000.00 (back in 2008) in support of California's Proposition 8, which was a ballot measure that would have banned gay marriage in the state until it was struck down by the Supreme Court in June.

Let me repeat that. He donated some money to a political cause that was on a ballot measure. For that, he was hounded out of his job.

We're really reaching a dangerous point with this kind of nonsense. The guy was basically cast out because his political beliefs weren't in line with the Approved Beliefs of the left. But I guess a congratulations is due to the gay activists who now have their bloody scalp. They succeeded in having a guy lose his job because he had the temerity to disagree with them.

Can you imagine the outrage if a conservative employer had summarily fired a couple dozen employees simply because they were leftists? I'm guessing that Eich might have saved his job if he had recanted his private beliefs and simply confessed to now personally supporting gay marriage.

I guess the heretics have to be purged though. That's the way to conduct a society, right? Remind me again, which people are in favor of tolerance and diversity?

Restaurant Owner In Clemson Doesn't Like Guns

Apparently, he doesn't like making money either.

As you may recall from my earlier breakdown of the new CWP law, bars and restaurants in SC who don't want patrons to carry concealed simply need to post a standard sign to prohibit CWP on their premises.

The legal sign you need to post looks like this:

That's the legal sign. In fact, it's the only sign that carries any legal force. Any deviation from this sign renders the sign ineffective. It's also pretty straightforward. Not a lot of editorializing.

However, the super-genius running this place in Clemson decided to post this sign:

Not a legal sign. Also, weapons-grade stupid.

Now, I have no problem with folks who want to prohibit carry in their establishments. Freedom of speech, freedom of association, it's all good. This guy is fine to do whatever he likes with his business, just as I'm free to go where I want - or not go.

The good news is this guy is going to get a very good real-world example of how the free market works. People on the left love to say that the free market needs to be regulated. Well I have a little secret for them - it is.

The free market is not regulated by a few people in some office in Washington, DC - it's regulated by everyone. My guess is that the free market in the upstate of South Carolina is going to deal with this restaurant, and this guy will either take this offensive sign down, or he'll go out of business.

On another note, where this guy goes terribly wrong is his intolerance about the whole CWP issue. I'm sure this guy is a stereotypical leftist who thinks that tolerance and diversity are great things -- except when your thoughts are not Approved Thoughts. There's no room in this guy's world for people who disagree with him on an issue. They're "losers" and "douche bags" not deserving of his tolerance.

This happens all the time with the left. Thoughts that aren't Approved Thoughts™ are de-legitimized and  mocked, but are never dealt with on the merits. For example, if you don't believe in man-made global warming, you're a "Denier" who doesn't believe in "Science". It goes on and on.

The left is all about tolerance and understanding until you step out of their Approved Thought Group and have an independent thought of your own.

But please, tell me more about how the conservatives are the ones who are so close-minded.