Sophianotloren

Tiene mucha letra pero merece la pena leerlo.

A disturbing proposal out of Tennessee. In response to continued decreases in state funding of higher education, the Board of Trustees has announced cost cutting and revenue raising plans that are terrible for both students and faculty but fairly expected. And tacked on is something very weird and upsetting:

Tenure and post-tenure review process: To be conducted by UT System Administration and with involvement by the Faculty Council, to look at awarding of tenure, post-tenure compensation and enacting of a de-tenure process.

A de-tenure process? First, what on earth does that have to do with the funding crisis? The answer is of course nothing but a university shock doctrine, with the Board using financial problems in order to gain power over professors. What would call for the loss of tenure? It’s unstated at this time, but one assumes the answer is anything that a provost or professor doesn’t want professors to say would be one likely category.

More here as the war on faculty continues.

At one time, I was really worried about Scott Walker becoming president. But with each passing day, it’s increasingly clear that this is a person not ready for prime time. Instead, this is Sarah Palin in a tie. Just one of many examples:

In response to a question from an audience member at at the Conservative Political Action conference earlier in the evening, Walker brought up the massive protests in Wisconsin in 2011 over a law he signed stripping public-sector unions of their power to collectively bargain.

“I want a commander-in-chief who will do everything in their power to ensure that the threat from radical Islamic terrorists do not wash up on American soil. We will have someone who leads and ultimately will send a message not only that we will protect American soil but do not take this upon freedom-loving people anywhere else in the world,” Walker said. “We need a leader with that kind of confidence. If I can take on a 100,000 protesters, I can do the same across the world.”

Following the remarks, the National Review’s Jim Geraghty wrote that he took no pleasure in defending the union protesters, but that Walker gave a “terrible response” to the Islamic State question. A spokeswoman for Walker’s political committee later sent Geraghty a statement downplaying the governor’s mention of the protesters.

“Governor Walker believes our fight against ISIS is one of the most important issues our country face,” the statement to Geraghty from Walker spokeswoman Kristen Kukowski said. “He was in no way comparing any American citizen to ISIS. What the governor was saying was when faced with adversity he chooses strength and leadership. Those are the qualities we need to fix the leadership void this White House has created.”

In an interview with Bloomberg Politics’ Mark Halperin and John Heilemann after the CPAC speech, Heilemann gave Walker a golden opportunity to deny that he was equating violent extremists with union protesters.

“You’re not actually comparing ISIS terrorists to the protesters in Wisconsin, right?” Heilemann asked him. “You’re not trying to make that comparison in either direction, that the protesters are equivalent to terrorists or that the terrorists are equivalent to protesters?”

“Not by a landmine — by a landslide out there difference, a Grand Canyon-sized difference,” Walker replied. “My point was just if I can handle that kind of pressure, that kind of intensity, I think I’m up for the challenge for whatever might come if i choose to run for President.”

I guess his strategy is to say as many crazy things as possible to win the Republican nomination and then assume the Koch Brothers and Sheldon Adelson will buy him the job with hundreds of millions in negative ads. But there’s way too much he can’t walk back here and thinking about this man facing Hillary Clinton in a debate makes me laugh. Of course, it’s entirely possible his strategy could work.

“I almost thanked you for
teaching me something about survival
back there,
but then I remembered
that the ocean never
handed me the gift of swimming.
I gave it to myself.”

- Y.Z, what I forgot to remember

cracked:

Like everything great, Star Wars came within an ass-hair’s width of being total shit. You gotta remember that in the ’70s anyone with a doofy beard and a plaid shirt could shoot a movie just by telling people what to do and not giving them the chance to disagree. It was a magical time.

But through George Lucas’ devotion to an acid flashback he was apparently having for three straight weeks, when production wrapped, he found himself with a masterpiece of celluloid, right?

Nope! Turns out that the first cut of Star Wars was an incomprehensible mess, and it was up to George’s wife and editor, Marcia Lucas, to swoop in and save the day … again.

Actually, Marcia was Lucas’ “muse” through the entire production, if by “muse” you mean “person who had all the good ideas.” It was her idea to kill Obi-Wan (apparently George’s first draft had him just disappearing at one point) and demanded that Lucas keep the “For Luck” kiss scene that would snarl the series up in a knotty mess of incest once the third movie was released. But, most importantly, she’s totally responsible for the Battle of Yavin, also known as The Death Star Trench Run scene, also known as The Part at the End of the Movie Where the Good Guys Win.

5 Women Who Invented Modern Pop Culture (And Got No Credit)

If the return of Frank Underwood stoked a thirst for real drama from the nation's capitol, perhaps the White House's late-Friday news dump of the proposed Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights will whet your whistle. Alongside common-sense things like Cong...

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During September 2014, the Digital Citizens Alliance and Netnames teamed up to publish a brand new report. Titled ‘Behind The Cyberlocker Door: A Report How Shadowy Cyberlockers Use Credit Card Companies to Make Millions,’ it offered insight into the finances of some of the world’s most popular cyberlocker sites.

The report had its issues, however. While many of the sites covered might at best be considered dubious, the inclusion of Mega.co.nz – the most scrutinized file-hosting startup in history – was a real head scratcher. Mega conforms with all relevant laws and responds quickly whenever content owners need something removed. By any standard the company lives up to the requirements of the DMCA.

“We consider the report grossly untrue and highly defamatory of Mega,” Mega CEO Graham Gaylard told TF at the time. But now, just five months on, Mega’s inclusion in the report has come back to bite the company in a big way.

Speaking via email with TorrentFreak this morning, Gaylard highlighted the company’s latest battle, one which has seen the company become unable to process payments from customers. It’s all connected with the NetNames report and has even seen the direct involvement of a U.S. politician.

According to Mega, following the publication of the report last September, SOPA and PIPA proponent Senator Patrick Leahy (Vermont, Chair Senate Judiciary Committee) put Visa and MasterCard under pressure to stop providing payment services to the ‘rogue’ companies listed in the NetNames report.

Following Leahy’s intervention, Visa and MasterCard then pressured PayPal to cease providing payment processing services to MEGA. As a result, Mega is no longer able to process payments.

“It is very disappointing to say the least. PayPal has been under huge pressure,” Gaylard told TF.

The company did not go without a fight, however.

“MEGA provided extensive statistics and other evidence showing that MEGA’s business is legitimate and legally compliant. After discussions that appeared to satisfy PayPal’s queries, MEGA authorised PayPal to share that material with Visa and MasterCard. Eventually PayPal made a non-negotiable decision to immediately terminate services to MEGA,” the company explains.

What makes the situation more unusual is that PayPal reportedly apologized to Mega for its withdrawal while acknowledging that company’s business is indeed legitimate.

However, PayPal also advised that Mega’s unique selling point – it’s end-to-end-encryption – was a key concern for the processor.

“MEGA has demonstrated that it is as compliant with its legal obligations as USA cloud storage services operated by Google, Microsoft, Apple, Dropbox, Box, Spideroak etc, but PayPal has advised that MEGA’s ‘unique encryption model’ presents an insurmountable difficulty,” Mega explains.

As of now, Mega is unable to process payments but is working on finding a replacement. In the meantime the company is waiving all storage limits and will not suspend any accounts for non-payment. All accounts have had their subscriptions extended by two months, free of charge.

Mega indicates that it will ride out the storm and will not bow to pressure nor compromise the privacy of its users.

“MEGA supplies cloud storage services to more than 15 million registered customers in more than 200 countries. MEGA will not compromise its end-to-end user controlled encryption model and is proud to not be part of the USA business network that discriminates against legitimate international businesses,” the company concludes.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and anonymous VPN services.

Due to complicated licensing agreements Netflix is only available in a few dozen countries, all of which have a different content library.

The same is true for many other media services such as BBC iPlayer, Amazon Instant Video, and even YouTube.

These regional blockades are a thorn in the side of Andrus Ansip, Vice-President for the Digital Single Market in the European Commission. In a speech this week he explained why these roadblocks should be abolished.

“Far too often, consumers find themselves redirected to a national website, or blocked. I know this from my own experience. You probably do as well,” Ansip said.

“This is one of many barriers that needs to be removed so that everyone can enjoy the best Europe has to offer online. It is a serious and common barrier, as well as extremely frustrating,” he added.

The Commissioner is targeting an issue that lies at the core of the movie and TV industries, who license content per location. Ansip specifically mentions BBC’s iPlayer, but other services including YouTube, Amazon and Netflix have the same restrictions.

The geoblocking restrictions are demanded by content creators, who want to sell the streaming rights on a regional basis. To enforce these licenses, users from outside of the designated countries are blocked.

The Commissioner believes that this is an outdated concept which he likens to discrimination. If people want to pay for content, they should be able to, regardless of where they live.

“In the offline world, this would be called discrimination. In the online world, it happens every day,” Ansip noted. “I want to pay – but I am not allowed to. I lose out, they lose out.”

“How can this be a good thing? We put up with the situation because there is not much alternative. Now it is time to do something about it,” he added.

The artificial restrictions are not a market issue according to the Commissioner, but a matter of rights. These rights should be enjoyed equally and not just by the happy few who happen to live in a ‘licensed’ country.

“There should be no exceptions. Everyone should be treated the same. This is a key principle that underpins everything we want to achieve,” Ansip said.

The EU is currently discussing how copyright legislation in Europe should be overhauled and the Vice-President for the Digital Single Market hopes that measures against geoblocking will be part of the new rules.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and anonymous VPN services.

by Nathan

sodomymcscurvylegs:

BADANG

juturnaway:

strigays:

muscleluvr2:

this is a 2000 dollar fursuit

honey your teacher is a furry

lab instructor by day, lab instructor by night

Courtney shared this story from Super Opinionated.

---

Jonathan Dushoff had issues with students in his population biology class cheating on his exams. One year there was suspicious behavior, but Dushoff and the proctors weren't able to prove the students cheated as it happened. So he looked closely at the test results to find the guilty students.

The final is entirely multiple choice. I got the results files from the scantron office. I figured that I wouldn't quite know what to do with a comparison just between these two kids (unless the tests were identical), and that it would be just about as easy (and far more informative) to compare everybody to everybody else. It's still kind of hard for me to get used to the fact that we have computers now and can really do stuff like this. I calculated the number of identical right answers and the number of identical wrong answers for each pair of students (~18K pairs), and plotted it out.

The diagonal line indicates two students who had the exact same wrong and right answers. No pair of students did this, but there were four outlying pairs that got close, shown in red. And looking back at the seating arrangements, in a class of 200 students, all four pairs were students who sat adjacent to each other.

Dushoff has since gone back to multiple exam versions.

Tags: cheating, education

This cartoon was created in collaboration with the wonderful Becky Hawkins.

Transcript:

Panel 1
A young man (20s or 30s) is talking with cheerful optimism to a woman who is about 60 years old. In the background a female secretary works on a laptop.
MAN: The reason most executives are male isn’t sexism. It just takes time for women to get promoted! In thirty years lots of top executives will be women!
WOMAN: Do you ever get deja vu?

Panel 2
A caption says TEN YEARS EARLIER. The same woman, who looks about 50, is listening to a different cheerful man talk. In the background, a different female secretary works on a computer with a flatscreen monitor.
MAN: The reason most executives are male isn’t sexism.

Panel 3
A caption says TWENTY YEARS EARLIER. The same woman, now about 40, is listening to a different cheerful man. In the background, a female secretary works on a computer with a huge boxy monitor.
MAN: It just takes time for women to get promoted!

Panel 4
A caption says THIRTY YEARS EARLIER. The same woman, now about 30, is being talked out by a cheerful man with a big mustache. But the woman has turned and is listening to the secretary in the background, an older woman working on an electric typewriter.
MAN: In thirty years, lots of top executives will be women.
SECRETARY: Do you ever get deja vu?

CAPTION FOR ENTIRE CARTOON: People grow old, excuses live forever.

Further reading: Fact Sheet: The Women’s Leadership Gap | Center for American Progress

Mardi Gras may have been last week, but the good times keep on rolling. New Orleans-based soul artist Walter “Wolfman” Washington knows a thing or two about good times—in his good-humored single “Mickey Mouse Boarding House,” the silky R&B crooner complains about his lodgings in the funkiest way possible. A thick beat nicely complements the bluesy piano behind him as Washington sings:

“By the time I got ready to eat
Believe me man, I was really beat
Runnin’ grits
A little bit of grease
And one cup of coffee, and no kinda meat”

Related Posts:

• Song of the Day: “Merry Christmas Baby”
• Song of the Day: “Never Over You”
• Song of the Day: “The Prayer”
• Song of the Day: “Colours”
• Song of the Day: “Hooked”

Politics are not widely considered a legitimate source of amusement in Hollywood, where the borrowed rhetoric by which political ideas are reduced to choices between the good (equality is good) and the bad (genocide is bad) tends to make even the most casual political small talk resemble a rally.

Years ago, Didion wrote about race and Hollywood and her comments still ring true today.

Related Posts:

• The Rumpus Interview with Steph Cha
• Eric Garner: A Rumpus Roundup
• Diversity Matters
• The Rumpus Interview with Alex Dimitrov and Kate Durbin
• When Racist Stereotypes Work in Your Favor

Yesterday I wrote about how Ohio judge Tim Grendell was abusing his contempt power in an unconstitutional attempt to retaliate against criticism.

Today a source provided me with a copy of the letter Judge Grendell sent to the editorial board of a local paper, the Plain Dealer, in response to a critical article.

The letter satisfies my expectations concerning Judge Grendell.

To the Editorial Board ofCleveland.com,
As a constitutional oriented judge and legal scholar, I appreciate the First Amendment and the general right of free speech.

What tha blue fuck is a "constitutional oriented judge," other than an attempt to make me choke on my morning coffee?

Also, note the classic censor's rhetorical move: you always start saying you respect free speech. BUT . . . . [Edit: I am reminded that the technical term for this is "gertruding."]

But the right to free speech is not unlimited. Just as a person cannot stand up in a movie theater and yell "fire", a person has no constitutional right to falsely tell a party in an ongoing child protective custody case that the judge is mentally ill, does not follow the law, and should be "kicked" by that party. Such irresponsible and false speech is just as detrimental to the public welfare and the fair administration of our public justice system as the prohibited movie theater conduct is to public safety.

So much arglebargle.

First: "the right to free speech is not unlimited" is another typical censor's rhetorical move. It's a non sequitur. If you have relevant authority showing that this particular instance of speech is outside the protection of the First Amendment, cite it. Otherwise this is like saying, "well, there are some circumstances where I am allowed to shoot someone" when the cops come to arrest you for shooting your spouse.

Second: Stahhhhp. Staahhhhp with the hackneyed, misleading fire in a crowded theater reference. Protip: the legal analysis of anyone who references that Holmes line is not to be taken seriously.

Third, the generic and conclusory "detrimental to the public welfare and fair administration of our public justice system" is meritless for the reasons I explained yesterday. Most of the language he's complaining about is explicitly opinion and rhetorical hyperbole, and he hasn't come close to offering the sort of compelling evidence of actual disruption of justice required by three quarters of a century of Supreme Court precedent.

In the case in my court, involving the protection of a child in need ofjudicial intervention, Nancy McArthur's false speech encouraging a noncompliant party to continue to be disrespectful of the Court and noncompliant with Court orders was not protected speech. It was interference with a judicial proceeding and improperly impeded the protection of a child.

Judge Grendell's proposition seems to be that if a party to a case asks me about a judge, and I criticize the judge, I'm subject to a contempt order because I am encouraging disobedience. I invite Judge Grendell, with the assistance of a doctor holding a flashlight if necessary, to cite any authority supporting that proposition.

Confidentiality limitations prevent a discussion of any other facts, but suffice to say, the Plain Dealer's Editorial Board and Brent Larkin are mistaken as to both the facts and the law. This is particularly disappointing because the Court provided the newspaper with the correct information before it published its editorial.

Oddly, though the issue is so important to him, Judge Grendell cannot cite a single precedent supporting his unconstitutionally narcissistic view of his own contempt power. Ultimately this letter is reminiscent not of an analysis by a "legal scholar" but of a YouTube comment.

People like this decide on which of your rights the State will recognize.

Update: Judge Tim Grendell's Odd Letter To The Paper About His Censorious Thuggery © 2007-2014 by the authors of Popehat. This feed is for personal, non-commercial use only. Using this feed on any other site is a copyright violation. No scraping.

Robert Moses was never elected to a major office in New York City, but he completely altered the topography of the metropolis through three decades of construction projects. Skilled at amassing power and harnessing the necessary resources for his parks, pools, bridges, tunnels, and above all expressways, his legacy continues to shape the city we know today in ways both good and bad. A new comic book turns this dramatic narrative into an anti-hero tale.

Robert Moses: The Master Builder of New York City by French comics writer Pierre Christin and Chilean artist Olivier Balez was released in November by Nobrow. Richly illustrated by Balez with the ruddy colors and loose lines of a mid-century book, Christin’s writing propels the story of an idealistic reformist turned the “master builder” of the five boroughs. Moses gradually concentrated positions in public works like New York City Parks Commissioner, Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority chair, and leader of the State Parks Council — at one point holding 12 offices simultaneously. Projects such as Jones Beach State Park aimed to add vibrancy to city life through publicly accessible recreation, while more disastrous initiatives like a proposed highway through Washington Square Park had his ruthlessness for construction colliding with activist Jane Jacobs.

This is all thoroughly chronicled in Robert Caro’s The Power Broker, a huge work of non-fiction in both its depth of research and its length — around 1,200 pages. The Robert Moses comic book is much slimmer, at just over 100 pages, and should be read as more of an introduction to the spirit of Moses rather than the “graphic biography” billed on the back cover. The highlight of the book is the art by Balez. He lovingly captures all the details of the sprawling swimming pool projects Moses built, from Astoria Pool to McCarren Park, and, in a split panel, compares him to Batman doing good and bad from his Randall’s Island “lair” — the Administration Building he built to serve as his center of operations.

However, the text calls the location of Moses’s headquarters “Randall Island,” and that’s where things start to break down. While Robert Moses is a beautiful book, it could have used more thorough editing to sharpen all its New York details. Poor “Staten Island” is referred to as “State Island” on the map of Moses projects right inside the front cover, and the line that the New York City panorama from the 1964 World’s Fair “gathers dust in a tiny deserted museum” might make the staff of the Queens Museum weep.

Still, it’s exciting to see characters like Robert Moses getting the comic book treatment. When Moses died in 1981, his New York Times obituary called him the man who “played a larger role in shaping the physical environment of New York State than any other figure in the 20th century.” The extent of his influence over the shape and character of the city remains unknown to many, and this book is a visually compelling introduction to that complicated legacy.

Robert Moses: The Master Builder of New York City by Pierre Christin and Olivier Balez is available from Nobrow.

In case you missed it, thanks to our patreon subscribers, old comics are now getting voteys! If we raise a bit more, I'll increase the rate to 2 a day!

Just two days before the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) released its report “Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror,” I sat in the audience at JACK in Brooklyn for a reading of the play Aftermath, written in 1919 by playwright Mary P. Burrill. Directed by Courtney Harge of the Colloquy Collective, the reading marked the first in a series highlighting black-authored anti-lynching plays that is running at JACK through June as part of its Forward Ferguson series, focused on artistic work tied to racial justice movements past and present.

After reading about the series and focusing on the description “anti-lynching,” I went to the theater anticipating didactic work. I assumed the historic play would focus on swaying white audiences to recognize the humanity of black individuals and challenging the systems of power that supported the violent suppression and murder of black people throughout the US. As the EJI report notes: “For more than six decades, as Southern whites used lynching to enforce a post-slavery system of racial dominance, white officials outside the South watched and did little.”

The term “anti-lynching” made me focus on questions of audience because it wasn’t people of color doing the lynching, it was whites. And as a New York Times op-ed responding to the EJI report noted, while blacks made up the majority of those being lynched, an array of racial and ethnic minorities, particularly Mexicans and Mexican Americans, were also regular targets. The people who needed to be stopped were whites, and so I assumed that these “anti-lynching” plays would be targeted at influencing their hearts and minds. But after hearing Burrill’s words read aloud by the company, and sticking around for the discussion that took place between the actors, the director, and the audience, it became clear that the assumptions I brought to the reading didn’t do justice to the complexities of the work.

Aftermath is a short play, only about 25 minutes long, and its story concerns a black family in the South, the patriarch of which has recently been lynched. Not long after his murder, the eldest son unexpectedly returns home from having fought in World War I, where he earned medals for his bravery. While his sister, mother, and younger brother decide to hold off telling the son about his father’s death, a neighbor stops and lets the tragic news slip. Enraged by the hypocrisy of a country that lauds him for fighting unjust powers overseas but stands by as his father is murdered for the color of his skin at home, the son grabs a gun, places another in the hand of his younger brother, and walks out of the house to a fate unknown as the brief tale ends.

It is a tight, well-crafted play that also manages to twist the form by not setting up traditional protagonist/antagonist relationships, as director Courtney Harge pointed out. Rather than being in direct conflict with one another, as is typically the case in theater, the characters are grappling with survival in the midst of external conflicts that are not of their making.

Who was this play written for? Who saw it? And what did it inspire in its audiences? Those were among the questions that came up in the discussion after the reading, and Harge, along with the cast, offered many insights. Harge suggested that the play, being so short, was likely first performed in churches with black congregations. Later, in 1928, it was produced by the Harlem-based Krigwa Players in New York City. Harge also reminded the audience that at base the play is a work of art, a response to the world in which Burrill lived and a recognition of the human struggle to cope in the face of constant threats of random and unprovoked violence.

What became clear through the discussion was that the play operates on many different levels at once. A culture of racist violence is the setting in which Burrill seeks to recognize and explore the human condition. As Harge and the cast discussed, they saw the characters as representing a variety of coping mechanisms: From the youngest son, who believes that walking hours out of his way will protect him (perhaps a reference to respectability politics); to the elderly mother, who relies on a mix of mysticism and religion; to keeping your head down; to violent rebellion.

Another question that came up in the discussion was why so many of the writers of these plays were women. Lauren Lattimore, who played the daughter Milly in the reading, offered a number of insights on this question, pointing out that women were often the survivors of these acts of violence (though women were also lynched in the US) and the ones who were forced to “maintain and manage” their families in the wake and in the midst of them.

At a time when a new racial justice movement is clearly underway, with new issues, goals, and demands of its own, it was powerful to reflect on the role that art plays in that setting. It was a welcome reminder that art serves not simply as an instrumental device capable of rallying support for a cause, but also as a means of expression and an opportunity for recognition and discussion among those who are most affected by the injustices being fought.

Colloquy Collective will lead four more readings through June 7 as part of the Forward Ferguson series at JACK (505 1/2 Waverly Ave, Clinton Hill, Brooklyn). The next one will be Corrie Crandall Howell’s The Forfeit (1925) on Sunday, March 8. Dr. Koritha Mitchell, professor and author of Living with Lynching: African American Lynching Plays, Performance, and Citizenship, 1890-1930, will be present for the reading and discussion on May 17.

A Toshiba steam turbine is now operational at the Kemper county Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle Plant in Mississippi.

That pink-decorated cake being sliced by men holding hands is not for the joyous occasion of two of those fellows getting married. Oh, no. That was an event to mark the 10th anniversary of the amendment to the Texas constitution that declared "Marriage in this state shall consist only of the union of one man and one woman." It also added, dickishly, "This state or a political subdivision of this state may not create or recognize any legal status identical or similar to marriage."

You might say, "Oh, sweet Rude Pundit, why would you think this looks like a pair of gay men cutting cake after taking their vows?" And the Rude Pundit would show you this:


These pictures couldn't be queerer if under the table was another dude blowing the big guy with the cake knife. (And, for the record, it totally looks like that big guy is being blown by a dude under the table while his new husband looks on approvingly.)

It was actually part of "Faith and Family Day," obviously the one day a year that Texans can express how much they love their god and how much they care about their families. The other 364? Fuck 'em raw.

Faith and Family Day involves a murder of nutter right-wing groups coming together to tell you how much they hate, hate, hate shit while telling you how much you need to love, love, love their GodJeebus. If you went, you got to hear Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick tell the gathered families, "We can be the leader in education, we can be the leader in creating jobs, we can be the leader in all that stuff, but we really need to be the leader for Christ. That’s the answer, that’s the hope that this state and country must look to...I don’t know if the end days are today, or a thousand years from now. That’s why we have to stand for Christ in all that we do." Obviously, inclusiveness was the message he wanted to impart: we'll include anyone who sniffs Christ's filthy feet. Muslims, Jews, atheists, and assorted heathens need not apply.

By the way, this speech followed Rep. Jeff Leach imploring everyone not to allow Sharia law to take over. That sound you hear is Jesus slapping his forehead as he thinks, "Irony just got crucified in the Lone Star State."