I haven't posted here in a while. I am quite busy, so I won't be able to give this the full analysis it deserves. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement has issued its review of the University of Florida Taser incident last month and found the use of the Taser to be justified (PDF file linked).

The Right to be Crazy

I am writing directly in response to the situation with professor Paul Mirecki at Kansas University, and to this diary, which claims that he was a bigot for remarks identifying creationism as a mythology and chiding fundamentalists. Mirecki's remarks about fundamentalists were perhaps over the top, but I think some of the offense likely came from the idea that creationism is a myth.

I think most of the regular posters on Daily Kos would agree with the principle of freedom of speech and would further agree that this is a principle of high importance. Freedom of speech, however, can only be built on freedom of belief.

Recently, diarists EmilyD and wishingwell presented the viewpoint that we should stop buying gifts for Christmas (or at least not buy them the day after Thanksgiving, though I'm not sure what the point is if you merely put it off). This is an idea I have seen before - that consumerism is bad, that Christmas shopping builds corporate profits at the expense of the working class, and that all this shopping corrupts and ignores the religious significance of Christmas.