Gerry Harbison shares his thoughts on McCook Community College’s creationism course, which is offered as a science class. Nice.

Two really unfortunate pieces of recent news, casting a negative light on the good people who are actually trying to make a difference.

Study: Many U.S. Soldiers in Iraq Admit Abusing Civilians, Backing Torture

In a survey of U.S. troops in combat in Iraq, less than half of Marines soldiers said they feel they should treat noncombatants with respect. Only about a half said they would report a member of their unit for killing or wounding an innocent civilian.

More than 40 percent support the idea of torture in some cases, and 10 percent reported personally abusing Iraqi civilians, the Pentagon said Friday in what it called its first ethics study of troops at the war front. Units exposed to the most combat were chosen for the study, officials said.

Looting suspects arrested in storm-ravaged Kansas town

Four soldiers and a reserve police officer were arrested Sunday on suspicion of looting cigarettes and alcohol from a store in this tornado-ravaged town, state officials said.

Just woke up from my post-race nap. I ran the Lincoln half-marathon this morning. It was raining and windy for about the first half, which didn’t bother me too much, but I didn’t think about the rain on the ground. My shoes and socks got soaked, which led my feet to be sitting in water for two hours. They got all waterlogged and cracked and it was one of the most uncomfortably painful feelings I’ve ever experienced. Then I also experienced the dreaded bloody nipples, but I fortunately realized it right before the 9 mile water station and managed to swipe some vaseline without having to stop.

I was really hoping to beat my last year’s time, since this year I trained and everything, but I just checked and I came in 20 seconds slower this year. I did, however, run into Guy Fiorita of Happy Young People, a friend from the undergrad days who now lives in New York City. He was in town for the weekend to run it.

My friend Nate sent me a link to this story from the Utah Daily Herald that leads with this line: “Utah County Republicans ended their convention on Saturday by debating Satan’s influence on illegal immigrants.”

I would like to offer the best quotes from this story, but it’s seriously mind-blowing from start to finish. Instead, here are three paragraphs from early in the story to give you a taste of what is to come.

Don Larsen, chairman of legislative District 65 for the Utah County Republican Party, had submitted a resolution warning that Satan’s minions want to eliminate national borders and do away with sovereignty.

In a speech at the convention, Larsen told those gathered that illegal immigrants “hate American people” and “are determined to destroy this country, and there is nothing they won’t do.”

Illegal aliens are in control of the media, and working in tandem with Democrats, are trying to “destroy Christian America” and replace it with “a godless new world order — and that is not extremism, that is fact,” Larsen said.

Okay, I can’t stop there. Here are some more:

One speaker, who was identified as “Joe,” said illegal immigrants were Marxist and under the influence of the devil. Another, who declined to give her name to the Daily Herald, said illegal immigrants should not be allowed because “they are not going to become Republicans…”

I’m more than a week late on this, but there’s an amazing piece at the UNO College Democrats blog on the Heineman / Hagel / Bruning dynamic. It helps illuminate the relationships these three have in their respective political pasts.

Also, today I was driving down Dodge street, hitting all the green lights and switching lanes (safely, using my turn signal) and flying past cars that were stopped at reds, at one point even driving side-by-side a motorcycle…and the whole time, “Danger Zone” by Kenny Loggins was on the radio, and it was AWESOME.

I had heard whispers of this during my DN days, but conspicuously, the bound volumes including Jon Bruning’s career as a columnist were the only ones missing from the DN’s hard-copy archives.

Leavenworth Street has had one of Bruning’s columns from the liberal college days delivered, and the ensuing discussion is definitely worth a read.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neal_Obermeyer

I feel like a real celebrity now. Thanks to whoever did that! 🙂

I found this new blog called Kenny Won’t Mow the other day when I saw I had an incoming link to my cartoon site. Now I see the person behind it even has an animated music video! This cracked me up so I had to share.

I happened to scan this drawing at different stages because I was considering keeping it in the rough pencil sketch stage, so I thought I’d share the progression of this particular piece. It’s an illustration of wrestler Mick Foley for a Pro Wrestling Torch review of his latest book.

Here are the original pencils, which were deliberately rough because I thought about just cranking up the contrast and leaving it at that. It would kind of fit Foley’s personality.

Once I had that scanned, I went back and inked it to tighten up the lines and also do a little work to make it look a little more like him.

I liked how that looked, but then I went ahead and did an ink wash, and here’s how that turned out.

For any subscribers to the Torch, this should appear in newsletter #963.

Within the last hour, Sara and I have experienced two major events.

We just ordered our Morrissey tickets!! I haven’t seen Morrissey live since December of 1997 at the Battersea Power Station in London. A friend and I wandered over there from across the Thames in hopes that there were still tickets available. It was one of only two concerts he held in England that year. That was the year Maladjusted came out, and most of his tour dates had been in America.

Now, almost 10 full years later, I’m going to see him again! Sara has never seen him and she’s very excited, because, as she put it, “Morrissey’s weird.” It was a much different situation this time around – the show is in Omaha, not London – and rather than walking to the show hoping tickets were still available, I called as soon as tickets went on sale at 5 and got through at 5:11 after a bunch of busy signals.

We also put in an offer on a house.

AND WE’RE GOING TO MORRISSEY!!!