Round and Round the Blogosphere

From the Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler, a case that makes me worry about the fate of Germany. A woman wants a speedy divorce from her husband (both come from Morocco) because her husband has beaten her and threatened to kill her. Guess what religion they are? However, the judge did not see this as a hardship case worthy of overthrowing the normally required one year between separation and divorce. Siting the Koran, the judge basically said, "Hey, men from your cultural background beat their wives all the time. No biggie." Such wonderful support for multi-culturalism and freedom of religion makes me want to barf.

From the The Wide Awake Cafe, another German denizen should be put to death, or so the activists for so-called "animal rights" say. Yes, just because a baby polar bear's mother has abandoned it, Knut, a polar bear cub who lives in the Berlin Zoo, should be killed instead of being hand-raised. Where do they find the loony bins who could advocate for the death of an animal? Well, I suppose if you keep in mind that many of these people call for the death of unborn humans, and that PETA routinely kills shelter animals (see this YouTube video for just some of the information that is out there), I guess it's not really that surprising. Language warning on the video.

Lastly, from JunkYardBlog, an interesting set of ideas on why perhaps we should rethink the decriminalization of marijuana. Now, I agree with Ace of Spades that "the plural of anecdote is not data," but I coulda told you a long time ago that marijuana fries your brain after talking to the sister of a guy who used it. He'd basically wiped his memory, not being able to remember such things as his own high school graduation, or going to visit his sister in the hospital after she gave birth. A former co-worker of my husband's, when he waited tables, went from straight A high school student, to high school dropout, to stripper, to waiting tables after getting pregnant while high (the stretch marks pretty much ended her stripping career). Props to her for having her child, though, and she and her husband (and the father of her baby) did try hard to be good parents. Now of course, libertarians also want to do away with the nanny state, but in the meantime, we might also want to think about the effect of kids throwing away their futures and ending up on the dole because of indulging in a so-called "harmless" drug.

And from yours truly, just because it's fun, some rehearsal footage from Phantom of the Opera on YouTube, with Michael Crawford and Sarah Brightman. Very cool, if you love or even like the Phantom musical!