MSU mechanical engineering professor shows why he’s not at Michigan

Via a friend who goes to Michigan State, this email sent from a mechanical engineering to the university's Muslim Student Association:

Dear Moslem Association:

As a professor of Mechanical Engineering here at MSU I intened to protest your protest. I am offended not by cartoons, but by
more mundane things like beheadings of civilians, cowardly attacks on public buildings, suicide murders, murders of Catholic priests (the latest in Turkey!), burnings of Christian chirches, the continued persecution of Coptic Christians in Egypt, the imposition of Sharia law on non-Muslims, the rapes of Scandinavain girls and women (called "whores" in your culture), the murder of film directors in Holland, and the rioting and looting in Paris France. This is what offends me, a soft-spoken person and academic, and many, many, many of my colleagues. I counsul you dissatisfied, agressive, brutal, and uncivilized slave-trading Moslems to be very aware of this as
you proceed with your infantile "protests." If you do not like the values of the West–see the 1st Ammendment–you are free to leave. I hope for God's sake that most of you choose that option. Please return to your ancestral homelands and build them up yourselves instead of troubling Americans.

Cordially Dr. Indrek S. Wichman, Professor of Mechanical Engineering.

Yes, those spelling mistakes are real.

This letter is really something. If I were a Muslim, I would have put a fist through my monitor at the sight of it. Obviously this bizarro Ward Churchill can say whatever he wants, but that doesn't excuse using his position as a mechanical engineering professor as a pulpit to preach hateful, misguided, and deeply insulting generalizations about his students.

Bush 41 on atheists

Kevin Drum included this particularly eye-popping quote in a post today about America’s disdain for atheists:

Robert Sherman: Surely you recognize the equal citizenship and patriotism of Americans who are atheists?

George H.W. Bush: No, I don’t know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God.

Apparently he said it in Chicago back in 1987. I can honestly say that this is one of the most shocking things I’ve ever heard of a modern president saying. I’ve always had a certain respect for Bush 41. Obviously I’m far to young to make any reasonable judgement about his presidency from experience, but anyone should be able to recognize that he was a brave politician. He compromised and gave up a second term in order to do the right thing and pave the way for the budget balancing in the 90s. But I just don’t know how much I can respect a man who says something as heinous as that.