And what better example of this to start off with than some good-old-fashioned denial from the racist thugs at Little Green Footballs Late German Fascists?
What do you get when you put a Koran together with a couple of slices of crisp, juicy bacon? Bacon: The New Hate Crime.
Uhm, hum…So, Chazmo, if someone were to smear the Torah in bacon (also forbidden by some branches of Judaism) and leave it at the front steps of the Knesset, is that also not a hate crime, or would that change in the target merit special attention by you and your bloodthirsty goons?
Cousin It then quotes Dymphna of Gates of Vienna (gee, not very subtle, are we?):
Where was the underlying crime that must exist for this to be a “hate” crime, under U.S. or Tennessee laws? Or was the underlying crime one that exists only under sharia law, followed with meticulous political correctness by the Clarksville police in reporting it as a hate crime? Will leaving a book on the steps of a mosque become criminal trespass, in order to find some underlying crime to make it “hateful” under the National Incident Based Reporting System (pdf format) of the Department of Justice? The methodology for gathering hate crime statistics uses 3 categories of crimes: against people, against property and against society. Since this was not a crime against property or people, under U.S. and state laws, should we assume that the Clarksville police department has found it to be a crime against society under sharia law?
Or are we in the never-never land of searching for or inventing underlying crimes, to criminalize hostile and critical speech, so that it can be prosecuted as a hate crime?
I’m no lawyer, but I believe trespassing with intent to incite violence is a crime. And I’m pretty certain that this can be considered harassment and maybe stalking, if not out-and-out making terroristic threats. At the absolute minimum, it’s criminal mischief.
But then again, I suppose that in the minds of Cousin It and his bigoted cohort, this is just harmless Saturday night drunken fun, as is this:
this:
or this.
And now for a local angle on anti-Muslim bigotry. This particular gem involves State Sen. Dan Patrick, who prior to his insertion into the Lege was a Reich-wing hate radio host. Last week, Patrick proved his predecessor prescient when he remarked: “I think he would be terrible in the Senate…He’d be a difficult person for the lieutenant governor and the leadership to work with.” What exactly did Patrick do, you ask? I’ll let The Flying Fascist spell it out:
It was Texas state senator Dan Patrick (R) who suggested to begin each legislative session with a Christian prayer led by a clergyman. Some people complained, but Patrick had none of it. But what happened when the prayer is led by an Imam? Patrick decided to cut and run.
And how did Patrick justify his bigoted temper tantrum?
I didn’t want my attendance on the floor to appear to be an endorsement.
An endorsement of what, pray tell? The fact that America, for all your bitching and moaning, is still the land of the free, open to people of ALL religious traditions, not just your hateful perversion of Christianity?
But wait, there’s more! At the end of that day’s session, he requested, and was granted special permission to explain himself. Here’s what he had to say then.
We witnessed something this morning that was extraordinary. The imam is fortunate to be in this great country, a nation that is so tolerant of others’ dream and faiths.
Yeah, so tolerant that you believe Muslims should count their blessings that they aren’t herded en masse to Adam Yoshida’s human-sized microwaves for the crime of not being a member of Patrick’s cult twisted version of Christianity. And then Patrick played the Martyr Card:
The senator told the assembly that the world must be puzzled by a country that would allow someone to bring a Quran into the Senate while it prohibits a child from carrying a Bible into a public school.
In the words of your bosom buddy Michelle MalKKKin: Boo-freakin’-hoo. For the 6.02x1023rd time, Christians have all the priviledges they could possibly want in this country. The only “rights” they’re being denied are the right to use the legislature as a club against anyone not in their special clique and the right to engage in what Roger Ebert rightly called “horizontal prayer.” Or are you using the Neocon Revised Standard Version Bible, which just happens to be missing Matthew 6:5, among others?
