"Welcome to the World of Consenting Adults"

Read this breathless tabloid report of an alleged strange chapter in the annals of modern luv:

Academy Award winner Morgan Freeman [68] plans to marry his step-granddaughter and possible mistress E'Dena Hines, family sources tell the National Enquirer.

The actor's nearly decade-long affair with his step-granddaughter, 27, hit the tabloids last month. E'Dena Hines is the grandchild of Morgan's first wife.

He and his now-estranged second wife, Myrna Colley-Lee, raised her.

The long-secret relationship with Hines likely led to the breakup of their marriage, say sources close to both Morgan Freeman and Myrna Colley-Lee.

That's bad enough. But today, The Enquirer reports that Freeman and Hines are planning to get married after Morgan's contentious divorce battle is over!

(source)

[Hat-tip for the link and the title to Frank Beckwith.]

Is Your City Prepared for a Home-Made Nuke?

As US president Barack Obama visits Moscow this week to discuss nuclear arms reduction with his Russian opposite number Dmitry Medvedev, a different nuclear threat is preoccupying emergency planners back home.

A panel of medical experts has just released its assessmentof the technologies and therapies that could be rolled out if a home-made nuclear bomb was ever detonated in the heart of an American city.

A device of this kind — now judged by Obama to pose "the most immediate and extreme threat to global security" — would kill hundreds of thousands of people. But as catastrophic as such an attack would be, it would not level an entire city, and a timely response could save many lives. Recent advances in techniques for mapping the path of radioactive fallout after an attack, combined with novel therapies for treating radiation victims, will improve survival chances, the report says.

"Clearly there would be loss of life, but it's not hopeless," says Georges Benjamin, head of the panel of doctors and public health officials that was convened by the National Academy of Sciences to assess the nation's level of preparedness for such an attack. "We feel that there are things that one can do to mitigate it."

So what would a city need to do? The panel explored the consequences of a nuclear explosion packing a punch equivalent to 10,000 tonnes of TNT. That's tiny compared with the thermonuclear weapons deployed by the US and Russia — and smaller even than the 15-kiloton bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945 — but plausible for an improvised device.

The blast wave would destroy buildings and kill almost everyone within 1 kilometer (see map), so the panel focused its attention on people outside this zone, for whom the main danger would come from radioactive fallout. "That's a place where you could get big gains if you plan right," says panel member Fred Mettler of the New Mexico Veterans Administration Health Center in Albuquerque.

Highly radioactive rubble and dust thrown up by the explosion would . . . (continue reading)

"Holy War" Brewing Over Virgina Islamic Academy's Expansion Plans

A holy war is brewing in Virginia, where a controversial Islamic school is seeking permission to expand its campus and a group of residents is going all out to stop it.

The Fairfax County Board of Supervisors held a public hearing Monday night to consider a proposal to expand the campus of the Islamic Saudi Academy, a Saudi-owned college preparatory school.

Critics of the plan point to former students of the school who have been convicted in a plot to assassinate former President Bush, and more recently, arrested for trying to board an airplane with a seven-inch kitchen knife.

And others say they oppose the move to expand the school for one reason only:

"We're opposed to the operation of the Islamic Saudi Academy because it teaches and practices Shariah law," said James Lafferty, chairman of the Virginia Anti-Shariah Task Force (VAST). "Shariah law is anti-constitutional and we feel that it is the ultimate improper land use here in the state where the Constitution was created."

Lafferty said his organization is a coalition with roughly 10 other groups that oppose the land-use expansion. By teaching Shariah law, Lafferty says, the school replaces the U.S. Constitution with a "very backward and barbaric" rule of law.

"Shariah law advocates rights via gender and religion," Lafferty told FOXNews.com. "They allocate rights by gender and religion. If you are a male who is Islamic, you have rights. If you're not, you have no rights."

Founded in 1984, the Islamic Saudi Academy seeks to "enable students to excel academically while maintaining the values of Islam and proficiency with the Arabic language" . . . (continue reading)

Me and Father Z

Back in February, the illustrious Father John Zuhlsdorf was kind enough to have me as a guest on his podcast. We discussed a variety of issues, including the (then) recently revealed Father Maciel scandal that rocked the Legionaries of Christ and the rest of the Catholic world, we touched on the controversy surrounding the SSPX's Bishop Williamson, Catholic apathy, situation ethics, "new math," homeschooling, and other sundry items.