The Lords have demonstrated their worth, despite being a bizarre anachronism. Charlie The Safety Elephant’s antiterror laws should now vaguely resemble laws, instead of things that a mad dictator might impose. This is a Major Improvement.

If you’re not a religious loon, vote Liberal.

(via Harry)

Do you remember the Muslim-hating vitriol outpoured by right-wing commentators after Egyptian Christian Hossam Armanious and his family were murdered in New Jersey?

The police have now arrested and charged two people for this horrible crime – an Edward McDonald and a Hamilton Sanchez, who are accused of murdering Mr Armonious and family to steal his money. Apologies from the right-wing loons are, as one might have expected from previous experience, not forthcoming (with the occasional classy exception).

Relatedly, Third Avenue makes a good point by analogy with a very different set of extremists.

(Armanious article via MemeFirst, which seems to have a strange mix of LGFites and sane people among its contributors. Worse, one of them appears to find The Vicar of Dibley funny).

Is the shooting of Nicola Calipari by US troops another example of Eason Jordan’s thesis? Giuliana Sgrena, the journalist whose life Mr Calipari sacrificed himself to save, opposed the occupation and was freed after paying a ransom (not things of which the Americans approve).

Probably not. The most likely explanation, as Jamie Kenny explains in more detail, is that US soldiers no longer care about outcomes in Iraq. If you immediately open fire on all cars you suspect may be dubious, rather than giving them a warning or the benefit of the doubt, your personal chances of death are reduced. If you don’t care about the wider success of the mission, this is your optimal strategy.

Jamie has another good article comparing Ken Livingstone and Tony Blair. Taster: "The odd thing about Livingston is that he’s the fully realized version of what Blair tries to present himself as: a tough minded, pragmatic leader capable of transcending his political roots to be seen as someone working for the population as a whole".

Right now, Tony is trying to re-establish his populist credentials with the public. One such recent move has been to denounce the ‘meaningless panic’ about risk, health and safety legislation and compensation. Oddly, he neglected to denounce one particular form of meaningless panic.

Andrew Rawnsley has a great article on the latter (top quote: "There is only one thing worse than making complex, sensitive and unprecedented law in a rush of fear. That is doing it in a pre-election panic as well". Found via Harry, who also has a good post on the jilbab case – it summarises as ‘unless we do the sane thing and declare all state institutions officially secular, there are no grounds whatsoever to object to the case’s outcome’.

Since you’ve all been such good readers, I’ll let you have some mad Euroweenie-bashing rantage. Erik at No Pasaran seems to think that Europeans oppose the death penalty in America, but do not do so in China, and are therefore hypocritical. This might be a vaguely credible position, if he provided any evidence that Europeans did not oppose the death penalty in China.

His ‘argument’ is based around the claim that Europeans complain more frequently about the death penalty in America than about the death penalty in China, even though the latter is much more cruelly and unjustly applied. This is true – but it’s true simply because most Europeans are significantly more interested by what goes on in America than by what goes on in China. You don’t need to bring in conspiracy nonsense about wanting to trade with the Chinese – and if you did, you’d run into the small logical problem that the US buys more goods from and sells more arms to China than the EU does… (link via Mark Holland).

Finally, what on earth should I do with my new Armstrong Williams? Suggestions in the comments…

Mark Lawson says it all on the recent outbreak of philistinism and pandering to religious loons. If you disagree with him, you’re a cunt.

"Sex is overrated, but it’s the most important thing that there is" – someone, recently.

It’s a good quote. Drunk nonsense was once featured underneath it; this is no longer the case. Some of the comments below may make limited sense as a result.

As you may have noticed, I enjoy trawling the darkest corners of the Internet for outbreaks of lunacy and fanaticism. I thought I’d share some of my secrets.

A Technorati search is one of your best friends here. If you need need a Muslim-hating terror hawk, go for dhimmitude. If you want to ensure they hate Europeans too, try EUrabia. Alternatively, if you’re in more of a ‘misogynist wanker’ frame of mind, you can go for pussification. For an unimaginative rightwing bigot, moonbat is ideal. Amusingly, Bushitler is also only used by lazy right-wingers who need a strawman…

Searching for cunt, pigfucker, and related phrases can also produce interesting results. This is how I found this article on Hunter S Thompson by Stephen Schwartz, who is both a cunt and a pigfucker. Digressionally, you should read this article, in which Jamie Kenny persuades a Chinese magazine to publish his obit for Dr Gonzo.

Also, follow any random link that might be interesting. Except the ones that appear to point at gay porn (which has been a problem when following the Jeff Gannon ridiculousness).

All glory to the hypnotoad:

Only £4500, to piss off every ‘Tony Martin Was Great’ swivel-eyed loon in the country? I love the BBC.

This anti-UK smear piece in Haaretz isn’t worth reading – at least not if you’ve read anything by Melanie Phillips, or any of the rants from the Decent Left (TM) about Ken Livingstone.

However, this quote from British Jewish TV producer Dan Patterson is interesting: "How can you be incandescent with fury about Israel, but not about what is going on in Sudan or with Syria in Lebanon? When you say you’ve just been in Israel, it’s like it used to be 20 years ago telling people you’d just been in South Africa". This is a very good analogy, especially as 20 years ago, there were a great many places worse than South Africa that didn’t attract the same opprobrium in the UK.

There are two possibilities at work here. One is that because of our country’s history, British people view colonial oppression by white people as something that we have a greater obligation to protest about than non-colonial oppression by non-white people. The other is that British people are not only antisemitic but also antisouthafricanic.

I wonder which is more likely?