A small-town judge with three wives was ordered removed from the bench by the Utah Supreme Court on Friday. The court unanimously agreed with the findings of the state's Judicial Conduct Commission, which recommended the removal of Judge Walter Steed for violating the state's bigamy law.

Steed has served for 25 years on the Justice Court in the polygamist community of Hildale in southern Utah, where he ruled on misdemeanor crimes such as drunken driving and domestic violence cases.

"[W]hen the law is violated or ignored by those charged by society with the fair and impartial enforcement of the law, the stability of our society is placed at undue risk," the court's ruling said.

Steed, who also works as a truck driver, scheduled a news conference for later Friday to discuss the ruling. He was paid a few hundred dollars monthly for serving in the part-time judicial position. [AP]

The Legislature on Friday approved a ban on nearly all abortions in South Dakota, setting up a direct legal assault on Roe v. Wade.

Republican Gov. Mike Rounds said he was inclined to sign the bill, which would make it a crime for doctors to perform an abortion unless it was necessary to save the woman's life. The measure would make no exception in cases of rape or incest.

Many opponents and supporters of abortion rights believe the U.S. Supreme Court is more likely to overturn its 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion now that Justices John Roberts and Samuel Alito are on the bench.

Planned Parenthood, which operates the only abortion clinic in South Dakota, has pledged to sue over the measure, which would become law July 1. The clinic does about 800 abortions a year.

The House passed the bill 50-18 on Friday. The Senate approved the measure 23-12 earlier this week.

Under the measure, doctors could get up to five years in prison for performing an illegal abortion.

The governor said he believes it would be better to eliminate abortion in a series of steps, but some abortion opponents want a court challenge that could wipe out abortion in one fell swoop.

"I've indicated I'm pro-life and I do believe abortion is wrong, and that we should do everything we can to save lives," Rounds said. "If this bill accomplishes that, then I am inclined to sign the bill into law."

During debate on the measure, lawmakers were told that an anonymous donor has pledged to give the state $1 million to defend the abortion ban in court. The Legislature is setting up a special account to accept donations for the legal fight.

"I can tell you first-hand we've had people stopping in our office trying to drop off checks to promote the defense of this legislation already," Rounds said.

While [Bush] sounds like he understands the importance of freedom of speech here, his failure to morally condemn the deadly rioting reeks of weakness to these animals. "What will this man do to us if he is afraid even to state his mind about what we are doing?" they will rightly ask.

The man in charge of protecting our sacred rights has no business walking on eggshells just because some followers of the religion that inspired the deaths of 3,000 Americans in a single morning claim to be "offended." Until terrorism, rioting, and murder committed in Allah's name become newsworthy again, no Moslem has a right to be offended about anything coming from a Westerner.

Both Washington and the Vatican have vigorously denounced acts against religion, but sound almost indifferent by comparison concerning acts against men. Moslems demonstrate so frequently with suicide bombings the consequences of placing a higher value on religion than on man's life that there is no excuse for a failure on anyone's part to appreciate the point. This makes the statements of both Bush and the Vatican completely unacceptable.

I was interviewed today by WMFD Television, Mansfield, Ohio. The subject was the Port Operations issue.

It will be broadcast ON THE WEB, at www.wmfd.com later today, probably around 5:00 PM and after.

It was done in my office. As always, I have no idea how well I did. I wanted to make three points:

1. This is an issue because fanatics with government support want to kill us, with nuclear bombs. Remember this context.

2. We cannot protect our borders, and to try is the wrong approach. Let the UAE have the port operations contract; this is minor.

3. The issue is the center of the insurgency, Iran. The real story is the growing power of Iran. Until we take out Iran, there is no security. Just last week Iran pressured the UAE to stop broadcasting radio programs that use offensive words, such as "freedom." Every country in the area will be forced to cave to Iranian demands, if we do not stand up to them. The result will be a catastrophe on America.

Ashland Professor Examines U.S. Port Issue

Nationwide, Americans are worrying that the United Arab Emirates' (UAE) takeover of six major U.S. ports is opening the door to another terrorist attack. The Bush Administration now appears to be slowing down the process after overwhelming criticism. While many are focusing on the port issue in and of itself, Dr. John Lewis, Assistant History Professor at Ashland University, says America must not look at this issue apart from everything else going on in the world. He says our greatest concern should be the rising power of the Iranian Islamic state. He says Iran continues to gain more power, is a solid enemy and that problem needs to be ended if we are really going to be safe in America.

My sources were primitive-Internet news, think tank sites, Ayn Rand-and I argued in clumsy strokes. Still, I was the only political dissident at the school, and before long I was having nasty fights with the admissions director over affirmative action, and with just about everybody on abortion. Debate consumed my life.

By the time I started at Northwestern, my interest [in evangelical Christianity] ceased to be purely academic, and I was experimenting routinely with these people: Bible studies, prayer groups, Campus Crusade for Christ, and the Evanston Bible Fellowship on Sunday mornings. However fascinating I found them, though, the appeal of radical Protestantism was ultimately limited. I like my religious experimentation best alone. I've only reached points of spiritual ecstasy in solitude and am more a mystic than anything else.

I had been elected president of the College Republicans at a time when campus conservatism was anemic. . . . [T]he only speakers that conservative groups would help bankroll were flaccid party insiders like Ken Starr and Ralph Reed.

If any principle underlies my attitude toward politics and, yes, sex, it is my rejection of the notion that identity is something that needs defining and resolution. Identity should be conflicted, fluid, and even painful-postmodern. And is there such a thing as a "postmodern conservative?" Of course not.

[I] refuse to get embroiled in the discussion of the pros and cons of who operates our ports--as I refuse to get embroiled in the discussion of whether wire-tapping of phone calls is or isn't a legitimate means of "homeland defense." These things are a diversion of the issue.

You fear a nuclear bomb going off in New York Harbor? Then crush the enemy. End the mullahs regime in Iran. Crush Syria. Whip the Saudis into line. And tell the world that self-sacrifice is evil and religion is a lie. Which means: tell the world that man is an end in himself, that his life on this earth is the only thing that is sacred, that the individual has a right to exist for his own sake, and that reason, not faith or force, is man's only means of knowledge, his only guide to action, and his basic means of survival.

It's either/or. The forces of literal barbarism are rising around the world. And here in America, as well--on the left and the right. There is not much time left, but we have to act on the premise that there is still time to change the intellectual climate.

After hearing from several students the night of the meeting, KVI-Seattle radio host Kirby Wilbur criticized the senate's decision on the air.

"As an alum, a member of the media, a taxpayer and a citizen, I had every right to get involved," Wilbur said in an e-mail. "If you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen, or stop making stupid comments."

As word spread about the Senate's vote, commentary appeared on hundreds of conservative Web sites bashing and threatening certain senate members.

The debate made it onto national television and news stations, including Fox News and MSNBC's Scarborough Country. More than 115 Marine Corps veterans signed a letter expressing their disapproval to the Board of Regents.

Criticism was primarily directed at ASUW Vice President Ashley Miller and sophomore Jill Edwards. Both said they received hundreds of hateful messages during the last two weeks.

Online blogs reported Miller said the UW already has enough memorials honoring rich, white men. The meeting minutes recorded "many monuments at the UW already commemorate rich white men."

"It's not that rich, white men don't deserve to be honored," Miller said yesterday. "We continue to overlook leaders of color and those who are women."

B-B-B-B-B-B-B-Blasphemy!

Who better to lead the charge against the Jihadists and their threats of brutal retaliation for Mohammad blasphemy then Cox and Forkum—the cleverest (and now the most courageous) editorial cartoonists in all America. Bravo!

Rod Dreher, a columnist and editor at the Dallas Morning News, is a self-confessed member of the vast right-wing conspiracy. As a lapsed Protestant who converted to Roman Catholicism several years ago, he is an unabashed religious and social conservative. He has little use for the morally relativist and libertine tendencies of modern liberalism. Too often, he says, "the Democrats act like the Party of Lust."

But Mr. Dreher is also a passionate environmentalist, a devotee of organic farming and a proponent of the New Urbanism, an anti-sprawl movement aimed at making residential neighborhoods more like pre-suburban small towns. He dislikes industrial agriculture, shopping malls, television, McMansions and mass consumerism. Efficiency--the guiding principle of free markets--is an "idol," he says, that must be "smashed." Too often, he claims, Republicans act like "the Party of Greed."

In Mr. Dreher's view, consumer-crazed capitalism makes a fetish of individual choice and, if left unchecked, "tends to pull families and communities apart." Thus consumerism and conservatism are, for him, incompatible, a fact that mainstream conservatives, he says, simply do not grasp. He warns that capitalism must be reined in by "the moral and spiritual energies of the people." It is not politics and economics that will save us, he declares. It is adherence to the "eternal moral norms" known as the Permanent Things.

And the most permanent thing of all is God. At the heart of Mr. Dreher's family-centered crunchy conservatism is an unwavering commitment to religious faith. And not just any religious faith but rigorous, old-fashioned orthodoxy. Only a firm grounding in religious commitment, he believes, can sustain crunchy conservatives in their struggle against the radical individualism and materialism he decries. Nearly all the crunchy cons he interviews are devoutly Christian or orthodox Jewish believers who are deliberately ordering their lives toward the ultimate end of "serving God, not the self"--often at considerable financial sacrifice.

[This] scholarship fund honor[s] World War II Fighter Pilot Gregory "Pappy" Boyington, a Congressional Medal of Honor winner and UW alumnus. Boyington was a 1934 UW aeronautics & astronautics engineering graduate. This fund provides scholarships to undergraduate students who are either a U.S Marine Corps veteran or are the child of a U.S Marine Corps veteran.