Death in the Congo: the LRA takes a "holiday"

(Warning: the following is a bummer, so if you don't want to read it, spoiler space is included)

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Via the BBC, here:

The LRA has increased attacks since forces from Uganda, South Sudan and DR Congo began an offensive in December.

But Mr Holmes said the operation must continue against the rebels.

Countries from Uganda to the Central African Republic have suffered 20 years of terror inflicted by the LRA and tens of thousands of children have been abducted to be fighters and sex slaves.  

Ah, Joseph Kony. It's nice to know that such a completely murderous SOB is making a place in practically any version of hell for himself, and all in the name of God. Just like the like-minded freaks in Al Qaeda. And he wants impunity, to boot:

The LRA insists the International Criminal Court must drop warrants of arrest for its leader Joseph Kony and his top commanders before they can sign a peace deal, which has been on the table since last year.

Comment: I'd like to drop something else on Kony instead, but that would be violent.

Convention caveats: one mild, one not so much

First, the almost milquetoast complaint about one convention in February:

Memo to the fine people from Capricon's parties department: it's the MIB Pirate party. We gave up dressing up like them thar guys from the Will Smith/Tommy Lee Jones movies eons ago. Next thing you know, people will start calling us the Inquisition and start putting up angry posters as if were Windycon '95 again. Ah, good times...

And now, the snarkier one for a con held around Mother's Day:

Not that I want to shout too loudly at  Anime Central's registration department, but would it be too much for you guys to finally get around to updating your online reg page?  I'm still being shown as owing you money that I don't, since (A) I sent you a check in late September that you guys cashed in mid-October, and (B) you're still showing me as owing $15 more despite that fact and an email I received last November that assured me that you'd be updating your records "soon". Oddly enough, the three emails I sent after that resulted in a vast roaring of crickets and tumbleweeds in response.

You guys are paying attention to this issue, right?

Here's hoping I'm only one of a handful of attendees with this problem, because standing in line for over 7 hours like I did last year because of the DoS attack on your computers hasn't stopped being irksome in my mind yet.

It's too bad the stimulus won't ban stupid people instead

Dispatches from the Culture Wars explains away some more idiocy that the WorldNut Daily chose to publish for apparently no good reason:

What's (Jay Sekulow) talking about? There's a provision in the stimulus bill that says that no public funds set aside for renovating college buildings can be used to renovate buildings used for religious worship. And Sekulow, uber-nutcase Sen. Jim DeMint and the Worldnutdaily are claiming that this is going to be implemented by schools accepting the funds and then banning access to all religious groups from their facilities to comply with the law.

Uh, yeah.

Next: the equally cracked Fred Phelps writes a WND op-ed piece about how families at military funerals he "pickets" who ignore him are "oppressing" his religious beliefs.  

The march of The Stupid is halted, at least temporarily

Not that I want to seem too reliant on Dispatches, but Ed posted another recent beaut concerning creationist/ID-endorsed biology textbook "disclaimers", this one coming from Mississippi. There's even a response by my alter-ego in there somewhere, if you can find it.