“I said: ‘Actually – we’re really pissed off at the Democrats and the cloture vote yesterday, so we’re not in the mood to give the party any money right now.’ And then I hung up.

I have to run to something in 5 minutes or else I might have stayed on the line and ranted a bit longer at the poor volunteer.

Sorry, Howard – still love you, man, but your party has betrayed me, betrayed the country, and betrayed the Constitution and I won’t soon forget it.”

“So – are images of the Prophet Muhammad illicit in Islam? From what some people do and say you might think so.

Not so fast. This is a classic zombie error – a commonplace belief that will. not. die!

I am not a specialist in Islamic art, but I teach an occasional low-level survey of the field at these Colleges, where we have an excellent Visual Resources Collection for a school of our size, a collection which is unfortunately for your visual delight very observant of copyright laws, so I can’t post any pictures. I popped some terms into the search engine and came up with this list of paintings of the Prophet Muhammad executed by Muslims that we happen to own slides of; this is not an exhaustive list!

So, journalists, don’t tell us this is a taboo subject matter in Islam. The physical depiction of the Prophet Muhammad may be a taboo subject matter in some sects of contemporary Islam, but let’s all be clear — this is not a universal prohibition.

Here are LOTS of examples for you arranged in chronological order…” (The Cranky Professor via walker)