Sign of his times

The foremost proponent of divine hatred of "fags," America, Israel, Catholics, Ireland (no, really) and the rest of the world, too, reportedly is about to leave this accursed coil for an encounter with divine justice.

I wonder what the Rev. Fred Phelps of Westboro Baptist Church might think of finding one of his own signs at the end of the glory road.

After all, if God hates me, what would keep the Almighty from hating Fred, too? To presume otherwise would be the height of false confidence, don't you think?

And if God is the enemy of thee, what's to say he's not also the enemy of me? To presume otherwise is . . . presumption.

The two things we know about God are the two things we just can't keep straight about Him -- first, that the Almighty is all-merciful and, second, that He is perfectly just. We tend to presume upon one characteristic or overemphasize the other.

IN THAT RESPECT, the theology of God Hates Fags, America, etc., and so on isn't that much more screwy than what we hear about the supreme being from the rest of our culture, media or Father Feelgood. It seems to me that the theology of Fred Phelps -- the one he's about to have to defend under the glaring spotlight of Divine Truth -- is just more concentrated . . . and consistently negative.

If I'm Fred Phelps of Topeka, Kan., I'm worrying that I just might be screwed even if I'm right, because my God is a God who's spoiling for a smite. And I'm about to be in the crosshairs of the Holy Flamethrower. If I'm Fred Phelps, I'm thinking "I made myself and everybody else miserable for a God I can't even trust?"

What the hell kind of god hates everybody and everything? The answer lies in the question -- the "god" of hell.

And the problem Rev. Phelps will find himself hard up against is not the seething hatred of God for "fags," America, Israel, Catholics, Ireland, the world or . . . if the bad reverend has miscalculated . . . him. God does what He must and what He will, but hatred of his children isn't in the divine equation. God hates sin; God loves sinners.

NO, the problem Rev. Phelps soon will confront is that one of his scary band's whacked-out signs might actually be spot-on . . . and that it will be the one marking the end of his road.

This one.

Lord, have mercy.

Put this in your search engine and query it

Oh, for cryin' out loud! Have they ever been to Topeka?

I didn't think so.

The Google people changed the name of the search engine this morning to pay tribute to Topeka, being that Topeka is now Google, Kan. What the people in Mountain View, Calif., don't understand, however, is the former Kansas Topeka's stunt wasn't a tribute to the former California Google -- it was straight up identity theft.

The former Kansas Topeka's reputation had been catching up to it for a century and a half or so, so the crappy little city on the sunflower-mottled flatlands decided to cadge a new start on life by passing itself off as the world's premier search engine, etc., and so on.

And now -- in a stunning fit of naivete surpassing what got it into its current Chinese misadventure -- the former California Google has saddled itself with the bad rep of the former Kansas Topeka.

HERE'S WHAT started it all, as reported a month ago on CNN:

At 79, Bill Bunten doesn't exactly understand the Internet boom. The Topeka, Kansas, mayor has an e-mail account, he said, but his assistants take care of most of his online communications and tend to search the Web for him.

But Bunten believes so firmly that younger residents of Kansas' capital city will benefit from faster Internet connections that he wants Topeka -- which he describes as a place of many lakes and the site of a burgeoning market for animal-food research -- to change its name for a month.

In a formal proclamation Monday, Bunten announced his city will be known as "Google" -- Google, Kansas.

"It's just fun. We're having a good time of it," he said of the unofficial name change, which will last through the end of March. "There's a lot of good things that are going on in our city."

The unusual move comes as several U.S. cities elbow for a spot in Google's new "Fiber for Communities" program. The Web giant is going to install new Internet connections in unannounced locations, giving those communities Internet speeds 100 times faster than those elsewhere, with data transfer rates faster than 1 gigabit per second.

WELL.

Frankly, I thought that if Google ever renamed itself in honor of a Midwestern town, it certainly would have been after the Nebraska Omaha, a far superior locale than the former Kansas Topeka. But no. . . .

Not that it matters, of course.

In a press release embargoed until 10 a.m. today, Omaha Mayor Jim Suttle will announce that Nebraska's largest city -- indeed, the largest municipality between Chicago and Denver -- is naming itself after the search-engine and Web-services company that already has committed to his metropolis.

Effective at high noon today, April 1, the former Nebraska Omaha will be known as Yahoo! Neb.

"For a long time, we thought the city had been selling itself short in the branding department with such a staid and, frankly, unintelligible name as 'Omaha,'" Suttle said in the release. "We think Yahoo! is a lot snappier. To our way of thinking, Yahoo! Neb., announces to the nation that we're the happiest sonofabitchin' place in the whole frickin' Great Plains region!

"You got some vodka on you? Yahoo! Neb., needs some more vodka," Suttle added. "And its mayor could use another Screwdriver, g**dammit."

IN THE press release, the president of the Yahoo! City Council, Garry Gernandt, agreed with Suttle that Yahoo! is a more upbeat, young-professional-friendly name than Omaha -- a Native American word meaning "streets of many potholes."

"Besides, we just think that naming the city Yahoo! makes a nice place name bookend for Wahoo just down the highway," he said. "Why the hell should those Saunders Country clodhoppers have all the fun? I mean, holy crap!"

Pandora, meet the hounds of hell

The world has gone mad.

What else can it be when whack jobs decide to use death as a weapon against the "Culture of Death," and when a Kansas state judge says the whack job can argue that killing Dr. George Tiller wasn't first-degree murder because the whack job really and truly thought he was saving babies?

Uh huh. And I really and truly think I'm the queen of France.

And I really and truly think I can go around saying "let them eat cake," and there will be no consequences -- like revolution and the "Reign of Terror."

IF THE KANSAS JUDGE really and truly thinks stretching criminal law to include an almost-justifiable homicide defense won't -- in one respect or another -- unleash the hounds of hell, then we're all about to have another think coming. The story so far, via The Associated Press:

On a balmy Sunday morning, Scott Roeder got up from a pew at Reformation Lutheran Church at the start of services and walked to the foyer, where two ushers were chatting around a table. Wordlessly, he pressed the barrel of a .22-caliber handgun to the forehead of Dr. George Tiller, one of the ushers, and pulled the trigger.

As his premeditated, first-degree murder trial begins Wednesday, no one — not even Roeder himself — disputes that he killed one of the nation's few late-term abortion providers.

But what had been expected to be an open-and-shut murder trial was upended Friday when a judge decided to let Roeder argue he should be convicted of voluntary manslaughter because he believed the May 31 slaying would save unborn children. Suddenly, the case has taken on a new significance that has galvanized both sides of the nation's abortion debate.

Prosecutors on Monday challenged the ruling, arguing that such a defense is not appropriately considered with premeditated first-degree murder when there is no evidence of an imminent attack at the time of the killing, and jury selection was delayed. A hearing was scheduled for Tuesday afternoon to give the defense time to respond.

"The State encourages this Court to not be the first to enable a defendant to justify premeditated murder because of an emotionally charged political belief," the prosecution wrote. "Such a ruling has far reaching consequences and would be contrary to Kansas law."

(snip)

A man who runs a Web site supporting violence against abortion providers said in the wake of the judge's decision that he has changed his mind about attending Roeder's trial.

The Rev. Don Spitz of Chesapeake, Va., said he and other activists from the Army of God plan to observe the court proceedings quietly next week.

"I am flabbergasted, but in a good way," Spitz said of the judge's decision.

Spitz acknowledged that the possibility of a voluntary manslaughter defense may influence some people who in the past wouldn't kill abortion providers because of the prospect of a sentence of death or life imprisonment. "It may increase the number of people who may be willing to take that risk," he said.

NOTE TO JUDGE: If the Army of God is happy, you should be afraid . . . very afraid.

I have heard others use the "justifiable homicide/defense of the innocent" argument, and it is nothing more than fallen angels dancing on the head of a semantic pin. And when all is said and done -- when the philosophy of nuts like Scott Roeder, the Army of God and its abortionist-killing acolyte Paul Hill escapes the fever swamps and the body count starts to rise -- you won't have legions of undead babies, a redeemed culture or anything approaching divine justice.

All you'll have is more and more death.

All you'll have is a discredited pro-life movement.

All you'll have is a divided country several steps closer to a homegrown Bosnia.

NO MATTER how "justified" the use of extralegal lethal force to stop legalized lethal force, what people like Roeder really have done is declare war. And justifying something as horrific as war is a tall order. Civilization demands no less, as does the God in Whose name these demons claim to commit murder.

It's called "just war doctrine," and I think you can apply it here as well as you can to Iraq and Afghanistan. From the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

The strict conditions for legitimate defense by military force require rigorous consideration. The gravity of such a decision makes it subject to rigorous conditions of moral legitimacy. At one and the same time:

the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain;

all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective;

there must be serious prospects of success;

the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. The power of modern means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition.

These are the traditional elements enumerated in what is called the "just war" doctrine.

The evaluation of these conditions for moral legitimacy belongs to the prudential judgment of those who have responsibility for the common good.

ON WHAT PLANET does assassinating abortionists meet any of these strict benchmarks for just violence? In whose reality does the common application of "justifiable homicide" as a "cure" for abortion lead to anything but an American bloodbath -- one which not only wouldn't spare the unborn but absolutely would consume untold legions of the already-born?

We live in a land of madness in a world of madness. And some who call themselves enemies of that madness just might be the maddest of all.

On George Tiller

George Tiller is dead, victim of an especially late-term abortion.

The doctor -- who specialized in late-term abortions at his Wichita, Kan., clinic -- fell victim to someone with murder in his heart and a gun in his hand. From a dispatch by The Associated Press:

The gunman fled, but a 51-year-old suspect was arrested some 170 miles away in suburban Kansas City three hours after the shooting, Wichita Deputy Police Chief Tom Stolz said. Johnson County sheriff's spokesman Tom Erickson identified the man in custody as Scott Roeder, who has not been charged in the slaying.

President Barack Obama said he was shocked and outraged over the killing.

Long a focus of national anti-abortion groups, including a summer-long protest in 1991, Tiller was serving as an usher during Sunday morning services when he was shot in the foyer of Reformation Lutheran Church, Stolz said. Tiller's attorney, Dan Monnat, said Tiller's wife, Jeanne, was in the choir at the time.

Stolz said all indications were that the man acted alone, although authorities were investigating whether he had any connection to anti-abortion groups.

Stolz said the man being held would likely be charged Monday with one count of murder and two of aggravated assault. Stolz said the gunman threatened two people who tried to stop him.

The slaying of the 67-year-old doctor is "an unspeakable tragedy," his widow, four children and 10 grandchildren said in statement issued by Monnat. "This is particularly heart-wrenching because George was shot down in his house of worship, a place of peace."

IT IS SAID in the Talmud that "whoever destroys one soul is regarded by the Torah as if he had destroyed a whole world and whoever saves one soul, is regarded as if he had saved a whole world."

Some right-wing, allegedly Christian whack jobs are celebrating the death of a man who committed great evil. But is George Tiller's judge, jury and executioner -- at least by God's standard -- any better than someone who might, if it were possible, abort millions of late-term fetuses single-handedly?

Would not both have "destroyed a whole world"?

In addition, Tiller's murderer -- through this orgy of death directed against a child of God -- will have done grave damage to a movement seeking to promote respect for the lives of humanity's most vulnerable members.

WHEN IT COMES DOWN to it, Tiller merely was an executioner, carrying out death sentences passed down by a parade of people for a plethora of reasons. Tiller was just the last stop for mothers and their unborn children on a hell-bound train conceptualized by Satan, assembled by fallen and hardened hearts, driven by elites in love with "final" solutions, stoked by politicians, switched onto the main line by materialism and ridden by the selfish and the desperate alike.

But Tiller's killer . . . now he represents a special breed. This was the kind of monster who can do the devil's work and convince himself it was the Lord's idea. This was someone who set himself up as judge, jury and executioner, then said to hell with the trial.

Whoever pulled the trigger on George Tiller unilaterally decided a nation of hit men was a far superior concept to a nation of laws, and he was just the Goodfella for the job.

IF WE HOPE to remain a nation of laws and not of warlords, the full weight of what law we have left must fall upon the gunman who took it upon himself to abort the abortionist. Or, to paraphrase Fox anchor Shepard Smith, "We are America. We do not f***ing assassinate people."

Roughly a generation ago, Pope John Paul II coined a term to describe a way of life such as ours. He called it the Culture of Death.

Basically, we are a society that figures most problems can be solved by somebody -- either in the womb or out -- ending up dead. We find death, in all its forms, strangely compelling . . . and we get what we value.

George Tiller's assassin deemed death an appropriate solution to the problem of a death-dealer and acted accordingly. In doing so, this "defender of life" became just another death-dealer -- another destroyer of a whole world -- establishing himself as another antihero of our anticulture.

The Culture of Death: It's not just for the George Tillers of the world.

It's also for all those who, in the name of God, decide they will become as gods and mete out divine vengeance accordingly.

Holy crap!

MEMO TO MY WIFE: You will not complain when I go into the bathroom with the newspaper.

You will not complain when I go into the bathroom with a trade paper, a magazine and a catalog.

You will not complain so long as I emerge from the bathroom on the same day I entered it.

Capiche?

NOW, from that very odd state of Kansas, here's a real loo loo from The Associated Press -- one that probably will leave you flush with horror and disbelief:

Deputies say a woman in western Kansas became stuck on her boyfriend's toilet after sitting on it for two years.

Ness County Sheriff Bryan Whipple said it appeared the 35-year-old Ness City woman's skin had grown around the seat. She initially refused emergency medical services but was finally convinced by responders and her boyfriend that she needed to be checked out at a hospital.

"We pried the toilet seat off with a pry bar and the seat went with her to the hospital," Whipple said. "The hospital removed it."

Whipple said investigators planned to present their report Wednesday to the county attorney, who will determine whether any charges should be filed against the woman's 36-year-old boyfriend.

"She was not glued. She was not tied. She was just physically stuck by her body," Whipple said. "It is hard to imagine. ... I still have a hard time imagining it myself."

He told investigators he brought his girlfriend food and water, and asked her every day to come out of the bathroom.

"And her reply would be, 'Maybe tomorrow,'" Whipple said. "According to him, she did not want to leave the bathroom."

The boyfriend called police on Feb. 27 to report that "there was something wrong with his girlfriend," Whipple said, adding that he never explained why it took him two years to call.