Francisco Nava ‘09 said his falsification of threatening emails to prominent campus conservatives and subsequent assault on himself stemmed from a belief that his actions would draw attention to the pro-chastity cause, attendees at a Monday-evening meeting said early Tuesday morning. The gathering included Nava, Butler College administrators and fellow Anscombe Society members.
[...]
“He said he pummeled his face; he didn’t say what with. He scraped his head against a brick wall [and] broke the bottle ... over his head,” Anscombe president Kevin Staley-Joyce ‘09 said, referring to a glass Orangina bottle with which Nava had initially said his assailants beat him during the attack. “It certainly was enough to merit treatment by doctors,” Staley-Joyce added.
[...]
Nava admitted to being “responsible for everything that happened,” Staley-Joyce said, adding that Nava “saw Anscombe’s ideals as not making enough progress” and wanted to bring more publicity to the group’s cause.
“He wanted something big and showy as opposed to the approach that we set out in our mission statement,” Staley-Joyce said. The statement describes Anscombe’s goals as providing “social support and a voice” for students committed to its ideals and “intellectual engagement” on campus.
[...]
Additionally, Staley-Joyce said, he found it “strange” that he “couldn’t tell a whole lot of difference” between Nava’s behavior during the meeting and the way he had acted before the hoax was revealed. In terms of his demeanor, “it was almost as if I was meeting the same Francisco that I met this time last week,” Staley-Joyce said.
And as a commenter notes, this would get more attention if it had involved a noose on a doorknob even though in this case, according to the reports, we have an actual physical assault and beating.
Francisco Nava ‘09 has admitted to fabricating an alleged assault on him that he said occurred Friday evening and to sending threatening emails to himself, other members of the Anscombe Society and prominent conservative politics professor Robert George, Princeton Township Police said today.
“He fabricated the story,” Det. Sgt. Ernie Silagyi said.
Nava was released to Public Safety and charges “have not been filed pending further investigation,” according to a statement from Township Police.
WE WILL, WE WILL MOCK YOU:
Atlas Shrugs: “Princeton Hate Crime: If it were a Black or Muslim Student .... the media would be beating us over the head with this story. Even the hoaxes get full media attention. Not this and it’s a horror.”
Brandon McGinley, The Daily Princetonian: “Whoever is responsible seems to have gotten the message that it is open season on people who defend morally traditional views on our campus. It’s time for the administration to send them a new message: the season is closed.”
Vocal Minority: “My guess is that nothing will happen to these perpetrators if they’re caught, owing to the religion and political views of the victim. Liberals claim to reject intolerance and violence; that statement is only half-right. It all depends on who the victim is. If the victim belongs to a group the left deems ‘protected,’ e.g., a religious, racial, or ethnic minority, then they will defend them to the ends of the earth.”
MarkTalk: “Compassionate Liberals beat conservative student to a bloody pulp, following death threats for his conservative political views or because he is a Hispanic Mormon, hard to tell with the mentally, culturally and socially retarded Moon Bats of the Left.”
The Strata-Sphere: “Left with know [sic] political recourse (no one is buying the paranoid delusions) these people have one recourse: take matters into their own hands. Do not be surprised if we see a spate of violence break out as we near the elections and there is no radical lefty among the top contenders. I think the top is coming off the restless and angry left.”
IN ADDITION: Eugene Volokh, who is supposedly an intellectual or something, opines: “And you further undermine others on the Right, some of whom might face real threats or attacks in the future but who will have a harder time being believed because of you. Lovely.” Yeah, because as we all know, the righties are the most put-upon minorities in America. As a Volokh commenter so succinctly put it: “Don’t we on the right EVER get our own Tawana Brawley?”
Over the weekend the beltway crowd has pushed forth the meme that there’s some kind of John McCain surge in the works, but I just ain’t buying it. First of all, poll-wise, there’s just no evidence of it, so all they seem to be running with are some recent newspaper endorsements he’s received (and, please, the endorsement of the sniveling “Independent Democrat” Joe Lieberman won’t help at all). Let’s take a look at what impact those newspaper endorsements will have according to Rasmussen:
Just 4% of Americans say an endorsement by their local newspaper will make them more likely to vote for a candidate. Thirteen percent (13%) say it will likely have the opposite impact.
McCain is dead in the water barring some weird confluence of extraordinary circumstances. I still think Romney’s going to be their guy. The Huckabubble will burst relatively soon and Mitt’s sitting on piles of cash. Thompson is a dud and Giuliani is covered in ooze.
MORE: I don’t see Ron Paul doing much in Iowa, but look for a surprise showing by him in New Hampshire. I’m going to go out on a limb and predict he’ll come in third behind Romney and McCain.
THE RISE OF RUDY: Good article in the Washington Post examining the young life of Rudy Guiliani and how early events helped mold him into the massive dickhead he is today.
Here’s a David Lynch-ish holiday greeting from the great band Blizten Trapper for you to enjoy.
SIDE NOTE: Blitzen Trapper’s album Wild Mountain Nation is my favorite of ‘07 (think Pavement meets the Kinks) and this year Rumproast will be teaming up with Rob from FREEyourmindandyourasswillfollow to unveil our best music of ‘07 picks. Stay tuned. Should be rolling in Wednesday or Thursday. If you have any recommendations you’d like to sneak in, please do so in comments.
A lot is being made today of this video of a former Hillary precinct captain switching to Obama’s camp, but, in my mind, the video embedded below, which is getting very little traffic, is far more effective. It’s gut-wrenching, touching, honest and very, very convincing. I’ve been teetering between supporting Obama, Edwards and Dodd (yeah, I know), but I think this may have permanently pushed me into the Obama fold. It’s just that good.
Dear terrorists, please kill several thousand people in an American city (or cities) of your choice so that I won’t continue to look like a fucking dunderhead to all of my ex-friends for hanging out with loathsome douchebags like Bill Sammon and Ann Coulter. Thanks, Ron Silver
Here we go again. Via TS at Instaputz I see that the somewhat-newly-minted wingnut and part-time actor Ron “Reversal of Fortune” Silver is pining for massive terrorist attacks over at Pantload Media:
The critics of our national security policies know we have the means to sort things out in finding the proper balance between civil liberties and security. What they haven’t figured out is how to deal with the real enemy so they avoid talking about it. They don’t like what we’re doing but they offer nothing else. I believe they’re afraid to take on our real adversaries.
In fact we are not afraid enough. Perhaps after losing Seattle, San Francisco, Chicago or Atlanta a great many of our citizens will realize that George Bush was not the person to be afraid of. Although I have every confidence they will find a way to blame him. Classic displacement-redirecting an impulse (in this case fear) onto a substitute target.
Perhaps after losing acting job after acting job Ron Silver will realize that he’s not being shunned in Hollywood because of his political views but because after 9/11 he turned into a full-blown, utterly repugnant dickhead.
Put that in your displacement and redirect it, Silver.
If you were watching the movie version of the terrorism trial that ended Thursday in Miami, FL, you might walk out around the time the seven suspects take an oath to al-Qaeda in a warehouse. The scene would feel so contrived, such a low-budget mockumentary of itself, that you might not be able to stomach another second.
The fact that this videotaped scene was in reality the centerpiece of the government’s case against seven defendants accused of conspiring to wage war against America is a testament to the strange challenges of trying to preemptively prosecute the war on terrorism.
[...]
The entire situation was concocted by the government. The warehouse was paid for by the FBI, and the defendants moved their operations there at the suggestion of an undercover informant who was also paid by the FBI. The swearing-in ceremony was led by the informant — who at another point also suggested a plan to bomb FBI offices in Miami. “The case was written, produced and directed by the FBI,” defense attorney Albert Levin said in his closing arguments.
[...]
But the heavy reliance on informants has led to cases that sometimes appear to exist in the land of make believe. At one point during the Liberty City investigation, Batiste suggested to the informant that they could blow up the Sears Tower so that it would fall into Lake Michigan and create a tsunami. “Where did you get this idea?” Batiste’s attorney later asked him on the stand. His answer was believable: “Just from watching the movies.”
And from the earlier Times article linked in the first blockquoted paragraph above:
When alleged ringleader Narseal Batiste, 32, presented an FBI informant he thought was an al-Qaeda operative with a list of materials necessary for jihad, it did not include explosives. Instead Batiste asked for $50,000, radios, uniforms and steel-toed boots. Was the plan to blow the Sears Tower up or kick it down?
Hey, and lest anyone forget, when this story broke back in June of last year the nuttersphere lurched into full panic/gotcha mode, alternately fretting about “homegrown jihad” and chiding the left for not taking this story seriously. This insightful ReidBlog post, written by a black woman from Florida, got the goat of a few hyperventilating pro-war bedwetters at the time. She wrote:
Guys. Take a deep breath. Liberty City is not Peshwar. It’s the hood, man. These are probably some militant brothas working out and doing marshal arts and fancying themselves revolutionaries. The idea that they had a serious plot going, or that they had any conceivable ties—familial or otherwise—to actual terrorists, is laughable. Prediction: this will go the way of the dirty bomber and the two yokels who were supposed to blow up electrical transformers in South Florida but wound up trying to buy a couple of AK-47s with a bad credit card. They’re doing 5 years apiece for some low-level violation today, after getting the Ashcroft treatment not long before the 2002 midterms.
Spot.Fucking.On.
I’ll give you one guess who penned this overwrought response to her post:
…Because really, the idea that a bunch of ‘hood negroes are capable of more than watching old Jim Kelly movies and playing pretend revolutionary? That’s just crazy talk! The black man is naturally lazy and shiftless, you see—and so his threats are idle ones, even when they come dressed in starched white Karate gear and tied up nicely with a cloth blackbelt bow.
Alas, what J Reid seemed to miss, in her eagerness to brush this off as insignificant, is that the group of “brothas” had no real ties to al Qaeda because the part of al Qaeda was played by undercover federal agents. Does that mean the silly “brothas” didn’t pose a threat? Well, thankfully, that’s now a moot question.
I stumbled upon a live music (*cough* bootlegs *cough*) MP3 blog called Nargothebort’s Deviant Culture that has some great stuff on it. TonyTiger, the host, only posts soundboard or FM recordings (for the most part), so you don’t have to suffer through abysmal audience recordings that are plagued by inferior sound quality or the endless yammering of some drunken fuck-knuckle positioned near the tape dweeb. The downside is that all files are hosted on RapidShare, so you have to be inordinately patient waiting for downloads, especially if a show requires two or more link clicks (hint: bookmark the posts and return at your leisure). Also, all files are compressed using the RAR format, so you have to be able to work through that (hint: WinRAR is a breeze).
I’m particularly enjoying a Who show from December ‘73 that occured just a little over a month before my favorite Who album Quadrophenia was released and it features several great (and lengthy) versions of songs from that album. There’s a lot more to be found there, so scroll down the right sidebar to see what floats your boat, but, be warned, if you download the Bob Seger live show I’m never speaking to you again.
I wouldn’t be caught dead reading the Post and frequently resist picking up a copy someone has left on the subway because I don’t want to look like a booger-eating moron, but they do have a knack for coming up with front page headlines that even I can’t resist. Here’s today’s:
I was sporadically watching the Republican debate yesterday, when I heard Mitt Romney say this:
We’re not going to get the White House nor strengthen America unless we can pull together the coalition of conservatives and conservative thought that has made us successful as a party. And that’s social conservatives, it’s also economic conservatives, and foreign policy and defense conservatives. Those three together form the three legs of the Republican stool that allowed Ronald Reagan to get elected and allowed our party to have strength over the last several decades.
“‘The Republican stool’? Did he really just say that?”
Granted, I haven’t paid a hell of a lot of attention to Romney, so I wasn’t aware, until I Googled it, that he’s been using this horrible, laughable phrase regularly. Hasn’t anyone in his camp pointed out to him how ridiculous and snark-worthy that phrase is?
“Hey, ummmm, Mitt, ya know, ya might want to go with the Republican tripod instead. Or come up with another leg and call it the Republican chair, ya, know, but ... you do know that a stool is a, ummm, bowel movement, don’t ya, Mitt?”
I can’t wait to face this guy in the general election (I still think he’s going to be their nom). He’s like John Kerry minus the purple heart and plus the grandmother’s shawl.
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