You may recall the American Crisis of Atheist Attack Ads from last year around this time. You may also look forward to seeing them next year around this time. Why do we, as humans, repeat the same, useless behaviors, over and over? Because of this:

Last year, a similar campaign by the association drew strong reactions.

The head of the Catholic League linked secular humanists to figures like Hitler and the serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer.

Crazy Bill Donohue is our god.
[Pic via]

Peace is possible, people. If Jews and Arabs can work together to sell cocaine and service hookers, what can't they accomplish?

From the London Times:

A rabbi set up in business as a drug dealer and lavished his supplies of cocaine on young prostitutes at parties, a jury was told yesterday.

Rabbi Baruch Chalomish, 54, bearded and wearing a trilby hat, shared the dock at Manchester Crown Court with an interpreter who occasionally translated the barristers' words into Hebrew.

He was said by the prosecution to be a wealthy man who took up with Nasir Abbas, also 54, a convicted dealer, who had the "knowhow" and the contacts in the drug trade. The rabbi was the financier in the operation. They set up their "commercial cocaine-supply operation" in an hotel service flat in Shudehill, Manchester, where, it is alleged, Chalomish liked to dispense the drug in return for "sexual favours".

Posters to various message boards tell stories of seeing bumper stickers with the message "Pray for Obama—Psalm 109:8" on the highway, only to look up the verse and find, "Let his days be few; and let another take his office." People — like the commenter "Panama" on INGunOwners.com, to pick one guy completely at random — think this is "too funny." The next verse in Psalms is, "Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow."

Anyway, now it's a real thing: CafePress is selling T-shirts and bumper stickers, the Christian Science Monitor is wondering whether it's "funny or sinister" to pray for Obama's death, and Rachel Maddow referenced it last night on her show.

UPDATE: CafePress appears to have halted sales of all the Psalm 109:8-related merchandise.

Psalm 109 is known as "A Cry for Vengeance," which is one of the foundational values of Christianity, along with small-business tax cuts. It's actually quite a little psalm, as psalms go, and the opening lines sound really familiar:

Hold not thy peace, O God of my praise;
for the mouth of the wicked and the mouth of the deceitful are opened against me:they have spoken against me with a lying tongue.
They compassed me about also with words of hatred; and fought against me without a cause.

Then it gets into the part where you pray for God to smite Barack Obama and condemn Malia and Sasha to poverty for the rest of their lives, a fate they deserve because they sprang from the loins of the sinful:

Let his children be continually vagabonds, and beg: let them seek their bread also out of their desolate places.

The Psalm 109:8 gag is one in what's becoming a long line of cheekily coded Obama death threats: There was the classified ad someone placed in a Pennsylvania paper hoping that he follows in "the footsteps of Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, and Kennedy," all of whom were assassinated. And there was the gun-toting New Hampshire teabagger with a sign saying it is time to "water the tree of liberty"—a reference to Thomas Jefferson's reminder that the tree of liberty must be watered from time to time with the "blood of tyrants and patriots."

Why not a T-shirt that says, "Will Somebody Please Kill That Guy Already?" The word games are getting tedious. If you want Barack Obama to die and for curses to "come into his bowels like water, and like oil into his bones," and for his name to be blotted out in one generation, just say so!

Here's our favorite part of Psalm 109:

Let mine adversaries be clothed with shame; and let them cover themselves with their own confusion, as with a mantle.

That sounds about right.

[Image via the Nazi Documentation Center of the City of Cologne.]

We could not help but to enter Bill O as a contender after his classic "Devil's advocate" bit last night:

Let me play Devil's advocate here: Barack Obama wants to win hearts and minds in the Middle East. Which is a good thing. And you know that, as a soldier, we can't kill all the Muslims. So we want to win as many hearts and minds of good, moderate Muslims as we can.

Not kill them all? Provocative! His competitor is Bryan Fischer, the "Director of Issues Analysis" for the American Family Association:

It is time, I suggest, to stop the practice of allowing Muslims to serve in the U.S. military...
Of course, most U.S. Muslims don't shoot up their fellow soldiers. Fine. As soon as Muslims give us a foolproof way to identify their jihadis from their moderates, we'll go back to allowing them to serve. You tell us who the ones are that we have to worry about, prove you're right, and Muslims can once again serve. Until that day comes, we simply cannot afford the risk. You invent a jihadi-detector that works every time it's used, and we'll welcome you back with open arms.
This is not Islamophobia, it is Islamo-realism.

The preposterousness of allowing Muslims to not be killed, or the Islamo-realism of banning them, just in case? Vote now!

[Pic via]

Pat Robertson, great Jesus-like man:

So you are dealing with not a religion. You're dealing with a political system. And I think we should treat it as such and treat its adherences as such as we would members of the Communist Party or members of some fascist group.

Can you top that, bearded Forbes columnist Tunku Varadarajan?

[We] must ask whether we are confronting a new phenomenon of violent rage, one we might dub—disconcertingly—"Going Muslim." This phrase would describe the turn of events where a seemingly integrated Muslim-American—a friendly donut vendor in New York, say, or an officer in the U.S. Army at Fort Hood—discards his apparent integration into American society and elects to vindicate his religion in an act of messianic violence against his fellow Americans.

Not the friendly donut vendor!

The difference between "going postal," in the conventional sense, and "going Muslim," in the sense that I suggest, is that there would not necessarily be a psychological "snapping" point in the case of the imminently violent Muslim; instead, there could be a calculated discarding of camouflage—the camouflage of integration—in an act of revelatory catharsis.

Yes, I've heard of cases of Muslims shedding their "American" skins like so many reptilian aliens from 'V.' Provocative point, Respectable Columnist Tunku Varadarajan. Vote for your favorite outrage now!

[Pic via]

What did you have for breakfast this morning?

(A) A bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich.
(B) Eggs Benedict.
(C) A Christmas ham.
(D) A bagel, a blintz, lox, matzo brei, kreplach, shmear, whitefish, sable, a "nosh" of anything, or nothing, because you're getting bar/bat-mitzvah'd next weekend and your parents told you to watch your figure.

Question 2:

You think Larry David is

(A) Not funny.
(B) Who?
(C) Hysterical.
(D) Bad for the Jews.

Question 3:

Your parents are divorced, and they both want you to come home for the high holidays. You:

(A) Go home to wherever you still have a good weed hookup.
(B) Go wherever more singles will be.
(C) Split holidays; Ma gets Yom Kippur, Dad gets Rosh Hashana.
(D) Can we not talk about my mother for once, please?

Question 4:

You want to marry a Gentile man or Gentile woman. How's this gonna work?

(A) Our kids will be progressive, they'll get more presents, it'll be fine. Give your college roommate Aariz a ring, we'll ordain him as a Universal Life minister, turn this thing into a rockin' multicultural experience.
(B) Well, we've lied to Mom for this long. What's another 20 years?
(C) Honestly, who cares? We love each other and we haven't been subject to a New York Magazine profile yet, so this can't be that complicated.
(D) He/she'll convert! We've got a great Rabbi and he's so welcoming and this is gonna be easy; we'll just do it in the closest temple, and be done with it. My spouse has fully embraced my spirituality and culture believes what Jews believe so, you know, draw baby a Mikvah and let's get goin' here!
(E) You're converting in an Orthodox temple, with an Orthodox rabbi, under strictly Orthodox rules. Throw out those Manolos, by the way.

Question 5:

Your parents are:

(A) Awesome.
(B) Annoying.
(C) One's Jewish, one ain't.
(D) They're both Jewish, Mom converted in a conservative Judasim temple a long time ago, but now attends Orthodox services with Dad.
(E) They were both born, raised, and remain Orthodox. I have a sneaking suspicion that one of them converted, but if they did, it was definitely an Orthodox synagogue. Nothing less. If they ever found me with a Shalom Auslander book, they would kick the everloving shit out of me.

If you answered A, B, or C to any of the questions, give yourself -5, -3, and -1 points.

If you answered D to any of the questions, give yourself 0.01 points.

And if you answered E to any of the questions, give yourself 100 points.

0 to -25 Points: Goyim.

1 to 99 Points: Meh.

100+ Points: Mazel Tov! According to certain authorities, You're a Jew! This is the only circumstance under which the government-funded Jews' Free School in North London will admit your child. Congrats:

The case began when a 12-year-old boy, an observant Jew whose father is Jewish and whose mother is a Jewish convert, applied to the school, JFS. Founded in 1732 as the Jews' Free School, it is a centerpiece of North London's Jewish community. It has around 1,900 students, but it gets far more applicants than it accepts....Because M's mother converted in a progressive, not an Orthodox, synagogue, the school said, she was not a Jew - nor was her son. It turned down his application.

Mind you, this is the New York Times most emailed articled today for a reason. There are wide, wide gaps in some Jewish communities where, despite regularly attending services, embracing Jewish customs into one's family's lives, and practicing on a daily basis, you are still not considered Jewish. This isn't just in the Orthodox community. A good example came up in last night's comments about this very issue:

I'm a half-breed (Shiksa mother) and I vividly remember being told that I was not Jewish by a girl at summer camp. I cried for days and couldn't understand how I was Jewish enough for a Bat Mitzvah and Hebrew school but not Jewish enough for this little girl in my bunk.

In the great literature of our time, Harry Potter, people without two magical parents are considered by evil angry purebred magical people to be "Mudbloods." This is kind of like that. Am I suggesting the Orthodox community in question in the New York Times today are anything like J.K. Rowling's Death Eaters? Not at all.

But it's interesting to think that the Anti-Defamation League—a Jewish organization whose sole purpose is to "stop the defamation of the Jewish people, to secure justice and fair treatment to all citizens alike," but has been criticized for its often elitist, extremist Zionist positioning—has yet to speak out on this one! Shocking. So: how antisemitic are some of these people Jews?

Orthodox Jews, of course, sympathize with the school, saying that observance is no test of Jewishness, and that all that matters is whether one's mother is Jewish. So little does observance matter, in fact, that "having a ham sandwich on the afternoon of Yom Kippur doesn't make you less Jewish," Rabbi Yitzchak Schochet, chairman of the Rabbinical Council of the United Synagogue, said recently.

Damn. Looks like I'll have to re-arrange the next questionnaire.

Jew-on-Jew antisemitism is an actual problem. This thing's gonna strike a very loud chord with many, many people, in many, many places. The case in question has since been overturned on the basis that the school has taken it upon itself to administer an ethnic test and a verdict is expected in the coming months.

Raymond Jessop allegedly has nine wives and is the first to be convicted (for sexually assaulting an underage girl) after the ranch, run by a sect called the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, was raided last year and 439 children were placed in foster care.

Among them, presumably, was the baby (now four) Jessop fathered with a 15-year-old. Experts said the child had a nearly 100 per cent probability of being his. Which was somewhat awkward for the defense. As were seized documents that show the girl, now 21, had been "assigned" to Jessop's brother but then passed over to him when she was 15. Who says romance is dead?

The sect's prophet, Warren Jeffs, is still awaiting trial in Arizona for being an accomplice to rape and for underage marriage.

All of this was an excuse, really, to run the picture. Which I can't stop looking at. I also can't shake the impression that the world would be a better place if women ran it.

As we mentioned on Monday, Dan Halloran is a member of a pre-Christian pagan religion that worships the Norse gods. There were actual photos of him performing rituals and stuff. He is the "First Atheling" of his "theod."

And he is a now a Republican City Council member from Queens. So, hey, let's all hoist our horns of mead, in his honor.

(Obviously voters across the nation are sick of Barack Obama's liberal monotheism, and this bodes il for Abrahamic Democrats in 2010.)

Dour Scottish Bible-readers have come up with some placards that they waved outside the theater on opening night in Glasgow yesterday, according to the BBC. They include: "Jesus, King of Kings, Not Queen of Heaven," and "God: My Son Is Not A Pervert." Seriously. They're actually funny if you yell them in a ridiculous Scottish accent.

The play, part of a festival in Glasgow called 'Glasgay!', was written by transsexual playwright Jo Clifford. The producer, Steven Thomson, said "Jesus Queen of Heaven is a literary work of fiction exploring the artists own personal journey of faith as a transgendered person."

"If Glasgow's council taxpayers were consulted, I doubt they would consider this was a good use of their money," responded a spokesman for the Christian Institute.

But it's fine because everyone is forgiven and happy! A blurb on the play's website reads: "And she does not condemn the gays or the queers or the trans women or the trans men, and no, not the straight women nor the straight men neither. Because she is the Daughter of God, most certainly, and almost as certainly the son also. And Gods child condemns nobody. She can only love…" Although apparently she can't punctuate, because 'God's' certainly takes a possessive.

The Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial races have nothing to do with Obama or national politics, at all, except in that Obama did not do as much campaigning and organizing in those two races as the Democratic candidates would've liked. Otherwise, they are strictly local races and the results will reflect only the material concerns of the residents of those states. Still! They have been in the news a lot, so let us talk about them.

New Jersey: Incumbent Governor Jon Corzine is a very rich former Goldman Sachs executive. Despite that, he was a pretty good liberal Senator, for a couple years (he voted against the war!). But then, like a moron, he decided to govern the ungovernable state of New Jersey. He was promptly met with a government shutdown and huge budget problems and a populace that enjoyed the various programs the government provided but did not want to pay so many taxes all the time, or at all. And so he has had to cut spending, which makes everyone mad, and raise some taxes, which made everyone mad.

So waddling in comes Republican Chris "The Big Man" Christie, who has a brilliant plan: he will cut taxes! And cut wasteful government spending! Sounds wonderful! Christie was initially kicking Corzine's ass in the polls, and Democrats wrote off Corzine. But Corzine, who is very rich, remember, launched a hilariously negative ad campaign against Christie. Now, because Christie is fat and also because he's refused to give any details at all on what he would do as governor besides "not be Jon Corzine" (but mostly because he is fat), he is neck-and-neck with Corzine.

That tie is also thanks to this guy named Steve Chris Daggett, who is running as an independent, which means "the guy you vote for if you hate Corzine but don't want to vote for a fat Republican." Daggett is running on a platform of cutting everyone's property taxes, which is always a wonderful idea.

This one is a toss-up.

Now: do you see anything in that summary about Barack Obama's approval ratings, or health care reform's popularity, or Nancy Pelosi? No, you don't. This has nothing to do with anything besides the terribleness of New Jersey's government and populace.

Virginia Virginia does not allow governors to serve consecutive terms, which is nuts, but it keeps things interesting. So there is Republican Robert F. McDonnell and Democrat Creigh Deeds. But stupid Deeds is a rural southern Virginia Democrat, not one of the rich suburban northern liberal Virginians, so he is not really exciting those Obama voters! Or black voters! So the coalitions that helped Obama win Virginia will probably not be turning out for Deeds. McDonnell is a tremendous asshole but this race is his to lose. Once again: this has nothing to do with national politics, except that people who vote on national issues don't usually turn out for off-year races.

New York's 23rd Congressional District This one is wonderful. Barack Obama appointed a Republican congressman from a safe Republican upstate New York seat to be the Secretary of the Army. The local Republicans decided to nominate a local Republican assemblywoman to take his place. But!!! While she is a Regular New York State Republican, she is also pro-abortion and pro-gays. So, hah, the complete lunatics who run the national Republican party, with blogs and TV shows and so on, went nuts and decided to throw their support behind the Conservative Party candidate.

New York's Conservative Party was invented to police the local Republicans, who have a tendency to be more liberal than Republicans elsewhere, because they want to get elected. It was also invented so that William Buckley could run for mayor on a "John Lindsay sucks and I am so awesome" platform. (Fun fact: Buckley supported congestion pricing! And also police brutality. He was always big on police brutality.)

So! The regular "moderate" Republican candidate, Dede Scozzafava, was called all sorts of names by the internet, and every Republican who endorsed her, like Newt Gingrich, got called even more names, by the internet. The Club For Growth then organized the grassroots conservative campaign for the Conservative Party candidate, some guy named Hoffman who does not actually live in the district and who is also not very smart. Sarah Palin's Facebook page sealed the deal, and suddenly every Republican who wants movement approval and money had to endorse Hoffman. Scozzafava finally quit the race (though she remains on the ballot) and, hilariously, endorsed the Democrat.

Hoffman will probably pull this one off. Frank Rich thinks this is a good thing, because the Republicans are forcing out even more of their electable moderates, and making the party more extreme and more white. Josh Marshall seems to concur, comparing it to when Rush Limbaugh was making everyone apologize to him a while back.

And, ok guys, it is maybe beneficial to the Democrats for the Republicans to become even less inclusive and even less able to adapt to the new America and all that.

But honestly, because of our intractable and entrenched two-party system, all this really means is that the next time the Republicans take back control of any portion of the government they will be even more destructive and evil than they were before.

There is one last race you should keep an eye on, though:

Queens NYC City Council District 19 This race to represent Bayside pits Democrat Kevin Kim, who'd be the first Korean-American elected to the New York city council, against Republican Dan Halloran, who is a pagan lord who worships ancient Norse gods.

As the Tribune first pointed out, Halloran is "First Atheling," or prince, of a Germanic neo-heathenist "theod" or tribe. State records show that he incorporated the group in 2002 with the official name of "New Normannii Reik of Theodish Belief."

Colloquially, Halloran's followers refer to their tribe as "New Normandy," with a territory that incorporates New York City and parts of New Jersey (some of Halloran's Pennsylvania tribesmen recently broke away — with his blessing — to form their own group, which they call "Arfstoll Thjod").

Obviously there's nothing wrong with being a modern pagan (except that it is dumb), but this particular branch of paganism has been quite popular with white supremacists. Not that this guy his a White Supremacist! Like many Pagans, he may just enjoy playing dress-up.

Jon Gosselin is an incredible, oblivious ass, and this Rabbi is a ridiculous fameball crook.

Forget the fact that Gosselin—not Jewish—sought out a Magical Jew to help him sort out his problems, and forget the fact that this Rabbi, who was once a punchline on 30 Rock, who has nine children, who is a fame-mongering celebrity in his own right, embraced this with open arms. Just go to the game tape and you'll see.

Gawker Black Ops video intern Sergio Hernandez, who went armed with $20 for admission and a FlipCam, described the scene as such:

Gosselin was 40 minutes late. A strange British woman who was inappropriately underdressed for a synagogue told us he was "stuck in traffic" and "delayed by the New York City marathon," and there was buzz that Gosselin had actually canceled his appearance. He did, eventually, show up to a stampede of paparazzi and entertainment cameras (by my count, at least Entertainment Tonight, Extra, TMZ, and FOX News were all there).

The event was, ostensibly, a discussion about the effect of fame and celebrity on religious and moral values. Jon opened by saying he wasn't a fameseeker and neither asked for nor invited his newfound celebrity (but nonetheless thanked the cameras in the room for showing up.)

Then Shmuley brought up Jon's divorce and basically tried to get him to blame his marital problems on fame and the pressure from TLC to draw in more ratings. Gosselin, for the most part, was pretty gracious about not villainizing Kate too much; he talked about going to therapy and learning about the mistakes he made during their marriage.

But Shmuley, who peppered the discussion with way too many smug, self-referential jokes, basically tried to excuse Jon's post-divorce, uh, behavior, with Kate's emasculation. Of course, you'd think if Shmuley and Gosselin hated all this attention so much, they might've, you know, not prostrated themselves in front of a few dozen cameras and charged $20 a person for it? But what would be the fun in losing out on that?

Especially interesting that Shmuley tried to paint TLC as the Bad People, because, you know, he's kinda been in bed with them before. And did they cancel Shalom In The Home? Well, it aired two seasons, and hasn't been on the air since 2007. So: you tell me. Again, a crook. Also: a misogynist, a snake-oil salesman, and a publicity whore. Come to think of it, that might be both of them. I'm not sure which behavior here begets the other, but whatever it is, wherever it comes from, this can't be good for The Kids, The Jews, and I don't know, Anybody Who's Ever Devoted Faith To Anything. This is really, really sad.

When you leave the Church of Scientology, in Church lingo, you "blew." Easy cracks on Scientology's stances against homosexuality (and high-profile, supposedly-closeted celebrity members) aside, it's already been made very clear that leaving Scientology is no easy task. Stalking, harassment, and physical intimidation have all been reported. In their latest report, the St. Petersburg Times reports several instances of this kind of thing happening. They look to quote hotheaded, scary Scientology spokescreature Tommy Davis, and ended up with this:

[Scientology leader David] Miscavige "redefines the term 'religious leader,' " Davis said, while some of the Times sources are on the "lunatic fringe'' of anti-Scientology. He said they are the real villains, who Miscavige dismissed for "suborning perjury, obstruction of justice and wasting millions of dollars of parishioner funds.'' He accused the Times of "naked bias" and engaging in tabloid journalism. "You have a few petty allegations,'' Davis said. "In fact, all you have is a few people who left a religion after committing destructive acts and are now complaining about what they did while in the church.''

Among those people the Times has previously spoken to include Mike Rinder who was the Scientology's official spokesman for 20 years before defecting. Oscar-winning director Paul Haggis recently cited Davis denouncing Rinder as one of the things that caused him to defect. So how do they pull them back once they've left?

Besides the aforementioned intimidation tactics? They had operatives "infiltrate" Scientology-defection groups to spy on them. They use the waivers Scientology members sign when they join the Church to open mail, including credit card statements, to locate the missing members. And they take members who turn themselves in after running away, and lock them in a cabin of the Church's cruise ship against their will. But then the Times turns to a special story about the chef who cooked at the wedding of Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. It's a particularly chilling tale, but the short version is: the cook invested a lot of time and money into joining Scientology and being able to cook at the wedding of Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. His expenses weren't being reimbursed and the honeymoon with Scientology quickly ended for him and his wife. They wanted to get out. There are "blow drills" (which is essentially a simulation of Scientology sounding a "prison break" alarm), high-speed car chases that the Church refuses to comment on, and the "ethics files" that they used to intimidate former members into coming back for fear of exposure. But the most insane are the private investigators they sent after the former Scientology cook. Observe:

"We looked at each other and we just went, 'Oh my God! Oh my God! What do we do now?' " Wolff said. "I was shaking. I was nervous. I was like … 'What do we say?' "There was no thought to refusing to open the door or telling the group to go away. Parman and Wolff were so unnerved that they reacted with compliance. They invited the group into the family room. The Scientology entourage included Morehead, two other base security officers and two private investigators.

They were searched for anything on Cruise, and then went through a "Sec" process, where they're rehabbed back into Scientology. They went through this once more before finally leaving for good, and the extent Scientology worked to get them back is absurd.

You would think, though, that they would learn something about the laws of resistance. The more Scientology pulls, the more tension will be stretched out, and the more these members are going to have to say. Even more so: the more attention they draw to Cruise, their most prized possession, the more scrutiny he'll be under. Not so much. Whether it's ego, hubris, megalomaniac impulses, or just plain-old religious fervor, Scientology's going to keep pulling, and keep denying. The question then remains: when are they going to start to be prosecuted?

Their intimidation tactics certainly—on some levels—sound illegal. Maybe they're not. But there's little doubt that the line's been crossed in Scientology at some point, with somebody. With their loose-cannon spokesman Davis, their high-profile defections, and more to inevitably come, someone saying something (or better yet, providing proof) can't really be that far off. In the mean time, all we can do is wait. And place a few decent bets.

Knowles is scheduled to perform her first ever concert in the land of fezes, camels carpets, pyramids and other obvious, slightly condescending cliches on November 6. Tickets for the show, at the Red Sea resort of Port Ghalib, are going for up to $400, according to a report on Al Arabiya.

But straight outta Cairo, a crazy Islamist MP named Hamdi Hassan, from a gang called The Muslim Brotherhood In Egypt, said he did not want no ho who appears nekkid in no goddamned videos up in his motherfucking hood. (I can't speak Arabic, so I'm choosing to assume this is the way he originally phrased it.) He wants regulators to mount up and get her permission to perform revoked.

"The government is trying to make people indulge in sin and licentiousness to cover up the other crimes it is committing against them," said Hassan in parliament, once again proving that the word 'licentiousness' is only used in such circumstances.

The Brotherhood is under pressure from that government. And various old-school religious nutjobs are fighting with hip, young religious nutjobs within its ranks. So this is seen as a way of making a statement and reminding people that hijabs are good, and booty-shaking is bad.

Last year another spittle-flecked crackpot in Egypt, a cleric called Khaled al-Gindi, likened Shakira to a prostitute and demanded she be banned. But added that he thought she was probably a "nice person." Which makes it all OK because everyone likes a hooker with a heart of gold.

Martin Bashir was grilling Scientology spokesthing Tommy Davis regarding Xenu, the intergalactic god who did or did not come to Earth 75 million years ago to bury his people in volcanos. Bashir asks Davis a very simple question: Do you guys believe in this crazy shit? Is Xenu and his people-pod volcano plot part of your religion? Etc. Watch what Davis does, starting at about 2:45 for context, but 3:40 if you just want to see him freak out and stomp off.

Why would Davis stomp off? Bashir wasn't asking him to explain Xenu, or justify Xenu, or even to provide context around Xenu. All he was asking was: Do you guys believe in an intergalactic God named Xenu? Is this part of your religion?

How is that an unfair line of inquiry? That's like feigning indignation at a line of inquiry asking whether or not Jews have horns. How can you? Of course we don't, you moron! But if we do, well, it's not a silly question, is it? Is it?!?

No, seriously: this guy Chuck Ripka of Otsego, Minnesota was once in the news for advocating prayer in the workplace. He wrote a book about how God told him to open his bank, and that God would "take care of the bottom line." The above picture was placed prominently in their offices. And yesterday, Ripka's bank was shut down by the Minnesota Department of Commerce regulators after screwing themselves via mass real-estate lending. It's been bought out by another bank already. This was sometime after a gas leak killed three bank workers in one of Ripka's offices a few years back. Lesson learned: if Jesus saves, he doesn't do it in Minnesota. Or he won't be doing it anymore. Meanwhile, watch Ripka in action below, and decide exactly how godless you prefer your finance professionals to be next time.

Moon is 89 and he's finally passed the responsibilities of his cult of personality and media empire on to his many children. Running the Unification Church is hard work! New church religious director Hyung Jin Moon flirted with Buddhism in college (who didn't?), and to prove his faith to his father's church he had to endure a marathon session of 21,000 "full-body bows" last August.

You may have heard that Moon owns The Washington Times and UPI, but did you know he also owns The New Yorker Hotel and a gun manufacturer? It's true, and weird! The WT loved Moon's recent memoir, and their story on the mass wedding is full of hilarious quotes from Unification Church officials and information from official Unification Church websites.

Hyung Jin Moon, Mr. Schanker said, "is a young guy, he has a pure heart, he is the baby of the family. Sometimes the Rev. Moon has polarized people in how he's challenged religious authorities. But the children are loving, embracing, down-to-earth. They have a broad spiritual vision for building healthy families and spiritual communities."

Hyung Jin Moon, who attended Harvard University and Harvard Divinity School, is married to Yeon Ah Lee and has five children. Still influenced by his Buddhist studies at Harvard, he is skilled in martial arts and has written three books, according to the www.familyfed.org, the church's Web site.

Moon has also "polarized people" by poaching baby leopard sharks, controlling the American sushi industry, and proclaiming himself the King of America in lavish DC ceremonies attended by various former presidents and current members of congress.

The WSJ says that terrified religious types across the nation have given in to fear of the Satanic disease and are dispensing with the use of common communion cups. That's just what the pig flu wants you to do, people!

At a United Church of Christ congregation in the suburbs of Chicago, Communion servers now slice up bread into bite-sized bits before distributing Communion; they no longer offer congregants a loaf from which to tear a hunk of bread. In the interest of keeping fingers away from communion wine, communicants at All Saints' Chapel in Sewanee, Tenn., are now instructed not to dip their Eucharistic bread into the cup but rather to sip the cup directly, since hands are often more infectious than mouths.

Christ himself further suggests that "Maybe you guys can just gaze upon me from afar" until flu season is over.
[Pic via]

You may recall that last month Yale University Press refused to publish images of the controversial cartoons *in a book about the cartoon controversy*. Because they were scared of offending the type of religious fanatic that would find this book, hop a plane to New Haven, and burn down the Yale University Press headquarters. Even repeating that story is giving us palpitations of rage.

Anyhow, now the cartoonist, Kurt Westergaard, is coming to make appearances at Yale and Princeton in the name of Free Speech. Good for him! You know what else? The cartoon did kind of suck! Were you offended by it? Go tell him that, at his appearance! Go tell him his cartoon sucked and was not funny and that you were offended by it! Call him an asshole if you must! Just don't kill anyone. That's what free speech is all about.

Fuck you, Yale University Press. See?