Politics

There's a tempest brewing over Bill Hobbs. A former Lipscomb student, Hobbs is best-known as a conservative political commentator and blogger. From an article by Travis Loller in The Tennessean, Bill:

...has resigned from his job at Belmont University after posting a cartoon he drew that depicts the Muslim prophet Muhammad holding a bomb. Bill Hobbs, who ran BillHobbs.com, wrote yesterday on another site that his resignation from Belmont's marketing and communications department would be effective Monday. His announcement came two days after the cartoon, representing Muhammad as a stick figure, was the subject of a Nashville Scene story. Hobbs posted a message about the controversy at 3:55 a.m. Thursday on another blog, NashvilleFiles.com, apologizing for the cartoon, which he called "appalling." He said it was drawn in a "moment of personal weakness." The drawing was posted in late February, after caricatures of Muhammad first appeared in a Danish newspaper and caused a worldwide furor among Muslims.

The Nashville Scene article is online and includes a screenshot of the cartoon. From the Nashville Scene article:

To kick things off, he posted a stick-figure drawing of Mohammed holding a bomb. Underneath the cartoon, in crude lettering, he wrote, "Mohammed Blows." Mike Kopp, a longtime Democratic politico, unearthed Hobbs' failed attempt at satire and posted about it on his blog, tennesseepoliticalpulse.com. "I have no quarrel with a person's right to free speech, but as a Christian, I believe this kind of expression goes against all the teachings of Jesus in the New Testament," Kopp wrote, claiming the faithful high ground. He then rhetorically challenged Bryson and Belmont to defend their affiliation with Hobbs. In the comments thread, Hobbs replied. "I posted that cartoon, and invited others to draw their own cartoons, as a way of protesting both American media cowardice and Islamist attempts to suppress free speech via threats of bombs and bullets and burning and beheading," he wrote. Then, he added an apologetic afterthought: "But then I never publicized the site and, quite frankly, forgot is was up until today." From there, the comments thread descended into a series of recriminations, marked by several quick posts in which Hobbs defended himself a little too vociferously. One might say nervously. Oh, and he deleted the cartoon.

The Bill Hobbs situation has drawn the attention of top dog conservative blogs like Malkin and Hewitt. Hobbs had stopped posting to his BillHobbs.com blog in January of this year, but today he added a post titled "It's A Brand New Beautiful Day" that included a photo of cherry blossoms and the following quotations:

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. - Romans 8:28 - God's in his heaven - All's right with the world. - Robert Browning

In reading about this stuff, I came across an interesting blog post from last September on BillHobbs.com in which he called on Lipscomb to give back $3 million that it got from the government to pay for a parking garage so that the money could go to Gulf Coast hurrican victims instead:

I haven't done much on the Porkbusters initiative that's sweeping the sensible side of the blogosphere, but I agree heartily with John Hutcheson and Bob Krumm about this: As politicians look for federal spending to cut in order to pay for rebuilding the Gulf Coast after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, Lipscomb University - where I was enrolled for three-plus years back in the mid-1980s - ought to step up and give back the $3 million it is getting from the government to build a parking garage. There are a lot of people who lost everything and need help more than Lipscomb University, a private Christian university, needs a taxpayer-funded parking garage. As a bonus, the $3 million was put in the most recent congressional transportation bill at the request of the previous president of Lipscomb, who left to take a job in the corporate world. His successor could set a new tone right away by canceling the project and asking Congress to redirect the money to Katrina and Rita relief and reconstruction. As Krumm says, it would be a very Christian gesture. Lipscomb touts on its website that it wants to collect stories for the alumni magazine about how membrs of the Lipscomb community are helping out with Katrina recovery. "With service and missions being a part of Lipscomb's core values we know you are praying, donating and volunteering to help the victims of Katrina. We would like to collect your stories. The Torch magazine is planning to highlight and honor the servant heart in an upcoming issue." A wonderful page-one story would be one that announces Lipscomb has asked Congress to take back the $3 million and use it for Katrina relief and reconstruction. If you agree - and especially if you are a Lipscomb alum - you can contact the school's administration via email addresses on this webpage.

As featured on The Writer's Almanac: "We Bring Democracy To The Fish" by Donald Hall from White Apples and the Taste of Stone

We Bring Democracy To The Fish It is unacceptable that fish prey on each other. For their comfort and safety, we will liberate them into fishfarms with secure, durable boundaries that exclude predators. Our care will provide for their liberty, health, happiness, and nutrition. Of course all creatures need to feel useful. At maturity the fish will discover their purposes.

Click here to watch The Daily Show's take on the study (see previous blog posts here and here) that showed prayer didn't help the recovery of heart patients.

Jon Stewart: "So, a stunning result that shows no matter what anybody does, over half the people that go in for heart surgery in this country develop significant complications. Hey, know what we should be praying for: Better heart surgeons."

and

Jon Stewart: "But a study that shows prayer actually does more harm than good. Come on! I'm hard pressed to imagine that's got any real world application. Or wait." [Bush speaking January 23, 2006, at Kansas State University] "I am, uh, sustained mightily by the fact that, uh, million of citizens, for whom I'll never get to thank personally, pray for me." Jon Stewart: "So that's what went wrong!"

Check out Stephen Colbert's interview with representative Darlene Hooley from Oregon's 5th district as part of The Colbert Report's series "Better Know a District." Maybe I was just in the mood for it, but I thought it was hilarious.

The talk this week is that Bush authorized Scooter Libby to leak classified data about Iraq in 2003. The White House hasn't denied it, but apparently it was legal though unusual for him to do so. To me, other recent news is more interesting. First, some quotes from Bush.

I wish I wasn't the war president. Who in the heck wants to be a war president? I don't. But this is what came our way. George Bush, August 6, 2004, to a convention of 5,000 minority journalists at the Washington Convention Center, quoted in the NY Times

I didn't want war. To assume I wanted war is just flat wrong... No president wants war. George Bush, press conference, March 21, 2006, quoted by BBC News

Last week the NY Times reported (reprinted in the International Herald Tribune):

During a private two-hour meeting in the Oval Office on Jan. 31, 2003, he made clear to Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain that he was determined to invade Iraq without the second resolution, or even if international arms inspectors failed to find unconventional weapons, said a confidential memo about the meeting written by Blair's top foreign policy adviser and reviewed by The New York Times. "Our diplomatic strategy had to be arranged around the military planning," David Manning, Blair's chief foreign policy adviser at the time, wrote in the memo that summarized the discussion between Bush, Blair and six of their top aides. "The start date for the military campaign was now penciled in for 10 March," Manning wrote, paraphrasing the president. "This was when the bombing would begin." Without much elaboration, the memo also says the president raised three possible ways of provoking a confrontation. Since they were first reported last month, neither the White House nor the British government has discussed them. "The U.S. was thinking of flying U2 reconnaissance aircraft with fighter cover over Iraq, painted in U.N. colours," the memo says, attributing the idea to Bush. "If Saddam fired on them, he would be in breach." It also described the president as saying, "The U.S. might be able to bring out a defector who could give a public presentation about Saddam's W.M.D," referring to weapons of mass destruction. A brief clause in the memo refers to a third possibility, mentioned by Bush, a proposal to assassinate Saddam Hussein. The memo does not indicate how Blair responded to the idea. The January 2003 memo is the latest in a series of secret memos produced by top aides to Blair that summarize private discussions between the president and the prime minister. Another group of British memos, including the so-called Downing Street memo written in July 2002, showed that some senior British officials had been concerned that the United States was determined to invade Iraq, and that the "intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy" by the Bush administration to fit its desire to go to war.

Sound like someone who didn't want to go to war?