The Noseys

It's that festive time of year again in California. Senator Ray Haynes just released the 2005 Nosey Awards!

This year's Nosey goes to:

1. AB 1677(Koretz) Correctional Condoms Act: This bill provides for the legalization of, and distribution of contraband in our states correctional facilities, by allowing any non-profit or health agency to freely distribute condoms and dental dams to inmates (Just what is a dental dam?). With the understanding that sex between inmates is a crime, this bill’s stated purpose is to prevent disease. What this strange bill DOES NOT DO, is provide for the disposal of the potentially hundreds of thousands of used condoms. Who gets stuck with that job? Would our Correctional Peace Officers be relegated to the duties of a peep show custodian?

But wait until you see the runners-up. Then you'll know how hard it must have been to pick a winner.

Bird Brains

The indispensable Michael Fumento looks in detail at the avian flu fuss and says "relax".

Bottom line? We are all going to die. But from various causes. There probably will be another pandemic, but nobody knows when or what its origin will be. We do know that with every month that passes, we'll be better prepared. Unless the current panic, having failed to materialize, makes us overly complacent. That's a real possibility. In 1976, swine flu went from "next pandemic" to laugh line on Saturday Night Live in record time. And as for those anointed experts, public health officials, and reporters whose wall calendars always read "1918" – it's time to buy a new one.

Compare and Contrast

Speaking of reasons to hate England, which I'm tempted to start calling "New France", compare the appeasement of the Church of England's bishops

A recent report commissioned by the church's bishops endorsed apologizing to Muslim leaders for the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq...

"Teheran might forgo a nuclear weapons capability if the EU-3 (Britain, France and Germany) delivered a suitably attractive incentive package," the report stated. "The non-nuclear weapon states need to be presented with rather more convincing arguments and incentives than they have been up to now, as to why it might be in their best interests not to go nuclear."

with this Jordanian Imam

A visit to the mosque that terrorist mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi attended as a child suggests that the Al Qaeda figure made a big mistake in plotting Amman’s triple bombings of 11/9.

The sermon Friday at the al-Falah mosque from Imam Mustafa Suleiman was, in his words, about “the criminality of the attacks and how they were not in keeping with Islam.” Mr. Suleiman said that from now on he will no longer allow Salafis, members of the ultrareligious sect of Sunni Islam percolating largely from Saudi Arabia, into his house of worship. After midmorning prayers Friday, he even urged his minions to cooperate with Jordan’s intelligence services when they come asking.

Me? I'm with the Imam on this one, even if the English have better music on Sundays.