From the NY Times:

Dr. Tiller, who had long been a lightning rod for controversy over the issue of abortion and had survived a shooting more than a decade ago, was shot inside his church here on Sunday morning, the authorities said. Dr. Tiller, 67, was shot with a handgun inside the lobby of his longtime church, Reformation Lutheran Church on the city’s East Side, just after 10 a.m. (Central Time). The service had started minutes earlier.

So this wasn’t the first time he’d been shot at. And hey, at least the shooter got right to the point, which rarely happens during sermons.

Naturally, the opinion of fucktards from Operation Rescue was considered important:

“Operation Rescue has worked tirelessly on peaceful, non-violent measures to bring him to justice through the legal system, the legislative system,” Mr. Newman said. “I’m a tireless advocate and spokesman for the pre-born children who are dying in clinics everyday. Mr. Tiller was an abortionist. But this wasn’t personal. We are pro life, and this act was antithetical to what we believe.”

“Pre-born children”? Does that kind of clumsy wordsmithing fool anyone? No, but people like Troy Newman are only preaching to the choir. They can sling around terms like “murder” when it comes to the elimination of a three-day-old blastocyst 150 cells strong and get away with it as long as only like-minded people are listening. And late-term abortions are an extreme rarity–only one percent or so of abortions performed in the U.S. occur after 21 weeks of gestational age. Assholes like Newman and his sign-waving acolytes are grossly misrepresenting reality every time they stand on a street corner to make fuckwits of themselves.

Jesus fucking Christ. The next time I hear anyone soberly refer to humanity as “an intelligent species,” I might have to whack him over the head with a mattock. People are so incredibly stupid and misguided, it’s scary.

The state championships for individual classes (L for large, I for intermediate, and M/S for medium/small combined) were held over the weekend.

In the Class L girls’ 400, a sophomore from Bishop Guertin (Nashua) named Cecilia Barowski ran 56.20 to knock Rachel Umberger’s nine-year-old mark of 56.22 off the books. Rachel, like me, went to Concord High School, and during her glory days I was coaching in the area and thus got to see her race often. She was a phenomenal talent, maybe a once-in-a-lifetime distance runner who benefited from the erudite coaching of the legendary Barb Higgins. Rachel was cut down by injuries at Duke and had to quit the sport before she was old enough to legally drink, and it’s a damned shame no one knows how fast she could have ultimately run. She toyed with her in-state “competition” and was the 2002 outdoor national champion in her money race, the 800, running 2:09.67. In 2000, she was part of a cross-country team that wound up ranked ninth in the nation by Harrier Magazine, and was the individual state champion.

Anyway, one of the two-headed distance monster of St. Thomas here in Dover, Kaitlyn D’Orazio, broke her own Class I record in the 800 with a 2:12.18. Her teammate, Rachel Schneider, broke the class record for the 1600 with a 4:55.72, winning by an absurd 16 seconds. Both will race at the Meet of Champions at UNH this Saturday, and I will be there.

And who better to defend this position than a vulgar monkey? (This sketch is based loosely on events streaming through my head and my life.)

runningtimes.com actually published this on their front page recently. Of course, it helps to be friends with the Web editor.

Literally resort to Bible-bopping.

That’s crazy Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis and the Creation Museum, by the way.

This picture is screaming for a caption.

This sounds like a serious case of overreaching on the part of local government:

A local pastor and his wife claim they were interrogated by a San Diego County official, who then threatened them with escalating fines if they continued to hold bible studies in their home, 10News reported.

…The county employee notified the couple that the small bible study, with an average of 15 people attending, was in violation of county regulations, according to Broyles.

Broyles said a few days later the couple received a written warning that listed “unlawful use of land” and told them to “stop religious assembly or apply for a major use permit” — a process that could cost tens of thousands of dollars.

Now, unless there’s a lot more to the story–local residents voicing legitimate complaints about parking problems, for example–this sounds like a bunch of bullshit on the part of the county. Fifteen people gathering in a private residence should not need a fucking permit to do anything. I that Bible study is about the most profound waste of time imaginable, but these people should be allowed to do it without forking over thousands of dollars (although there’s a certain dark justice in the idea given the untold millions–hell, billions–religious organizations have saved over the years owing to unjustifiable tax exemptions).

Christians are wont to scream about “persecution,” and whereas most of the time this translates to “We can’t use secular entities to enforce out morality on others 100 percent of time,” this sort of unnecessary intrusion gives them ammunition.

Hell, home Bible study should be encouraged, not punished. The more time people spend at gatherings like the one in San Diego, the less likely they are to continue trying to shoehorn religious nonsense into public schools and other places it doesn’t belong. (That’s probably a failed theory, but work with me here.) When people want to self-quarantine their stupid ideas and beliefs, by all means let them.

It does a menopausal old broad’s estrogen-deprived heart good to be inked on a skanky athlete’s six-pack:

Generated by Loonapix.

“I’m proud to say that I oppose same sex marriage. – Calling the coupling of individuals of the same sex marriage cheapens the sanctity of the union I share with my wife. It lessens our bond with one another. Sexual coupling in a manner which cannot result in the procreation of children is a mortal sin and calling that coupling marriage legitimizes that mortal sin in society. So Janet can call me a domestic terrorist all she wants, but I refuse to alter my thinking because she finds it offensive. I find her and her homo buddies offensive.”

I’ll never understand this sort of claim. Does the fact that people jerk off in bus terminals cheapen my sexual experiences with other people, back in the Pleistocene era when such things occasionally happened? Do soup kitchens ruin the meals of diners at five-star restaurants? Actually, these aren’t good analogies–there’s no basis for judging same-sex romance to be inferior to hetero romance. But even if it was, what the hell of it?

And this is from a Gribbit post in which he emphasizes his entire credo: Don’t consider issues, just blindly oppose everything Obama does because you don’t like him:

“I oppose POTUS Barry Obamaramadingdong and all of his policies because he and his policies are dangerous for our people. He is a moron. His ideas are outdated socialist tripe which have failed each and every time they have been tried before.”

Interesting perspective coming from someone who lives on the government dole (see the second and third entries, which Gribbit deleted from his blog but live on thanks to the Wayback Machine). Yeah, fuck socialism! Everyone needs to take responsibility! Except for asshole perseverating right-wing shut-in bloggers!

It’s difficult to believe that someone could oppose absolutely everything advanced by a given presidential administration. GWB was a thoroughgoing wreck of a president, but he said and did numerous things I cheerfully agreed with. People like Gribbit would rip Obama for pulling troops out of Iraq and then rip him just as hard for signing off on a “surge.” Anyone who can simultaneously bitch about someone being a Muslim and an affiliate of a nutter Christian (the Jeremiah Wright affair) obviously places venom far, far ahead of reason.

I could cut this turd some slack and maybe be sympathetic with respect to his mental problems if he weren’t such a raging, unrelenting hypocritical fuckball. I’d have social anxiety too if I had Gribbit’s personality, because someone would want to kick my ass every time I walked out my front door.