Magic Statistics

As part of a plan called "Increase the hejab (veil) culture and female chastity”, the Iranian government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wants to segregate public walkways.

[T]he Ministry of Housing and Urban Development has received orders to construct separate pedestrian walkways for men and women, according to Alia [a deputy in the Iranian Parliament].

Constructing separate pedestrian walkways? Now there's a government make-work project if I ever heard of one. Does the plan include seven-foot-high concrete walls between the walkways to ensure that men and women don't sneak peeks at each other? The Iranian Government Employees' Union should ensure that it does—for the good of Iranian society, of course.

You can tell that President Ahmadinejad has experience in keeping public works office employees hopping.

Previously, when he was Mayor of Tehran, Ahmadinejad ordered all the buildings belonging to the municipality to have separate elevators for men and women.

Separate elevators?! What an ingenious scheme to promote featherbedding of government workers strict public morals among the citizens of Tehran. That Mahmoud is no dummy. He knows that dirty deeds are done in elevators all the time.

“The Ministry of Housing and Urban Development will have an obligation to construct apartments in a special way … which would be in line with the culture and atmosphere of an Islamic society. The Ministry of Roads and Transport must pay special attention to the walkways, roads, railways, and transportation routes so that we no longer get reports of mal-veiling in these routes”, the hard-line Majlis deputy said.

I'm not sure what "mal-veiling" is, but it sounds very serious. Prevention of mal-veiling obviously requires the expenditure of gazillions of rials. As a government priority, Operation Increase Government Employment Hejab Culture ranks second only to nuclear weapons development. Items of lesser importance—economic diversification, education, medical treatment, stuff like that—will just have to wait.

via The Free West.

Previous related posts:

• Middle East "locus of the final war" between Islam and the West
• Merkel: Threat of Ahmadinejad like that of Hitler
• How Iran duped Europe

Scott Brison is clearly the front-runner for leadership of the Liberal Party of Canada. Last November, he sent an informative e-mail to a senior bank official the day before important decisions about Canada's income tax laws were announced. When questioned about the e-mail last week, he denied sending it. Now he admits sending it but maintains it's no big deal and will not impact his campaign for the party leadership.

Asked yesterday why he lied to the newspaper, Mr. Brison said, "I was caught off guard at the time. I was not expecting the question, and the moment I read The Globe the next day, I immediately knew that I wanted to correct the record and to do a press conference."

That's understandable: Liberals rarely "expect" questions about an under-the-table favour to a crony. And they're usually "caught off guard" when asked to come clean about it.

Yesterday, he said that he regrets "a momentary lapse of judgment" and described what he did as "naive."

"This was clearly not an issue of integrity. It was a momentary lapse of judgment in a nine-year political career that I think has been one of generally good decision-making," he said.

Being exposed as a liar is "not an issue of integrity". You can't make this stuff up!

Despite his self-inflicted tribulation, Mr Brison promises to persist in his bid for party leader. Being caught in a lie is just "a bump in the road". That is so perfect! Scott Brison has demonstrated that he is ready to assume the mantle of Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin. He's got what it takes to be Liberal leader. He is now the man to beat.

As did George Will and many others. Matt's really slow catching up with this "news flash".

Poll: Republicans Are Happier Than Democrats
Wed Mar 15 2006 10:14:36 ET

The Pew Research Center recently updated a question about happiness that the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago has been asking since 1972.

In every asking of the question, ROLL CALL reports, Republicans have been happier than Democrats.

Republicans tend to be better off than Democrats, and that is one explanation for the happiness gap. But when the researchers controlled for household income, Republicans at all income levels were happier than Democrats at those same income levels.

As for ideology, conservative Republicans were happier than conservative Democrats, and moderate to liberal Republicans were happier than comparable Democrats.

I blogged this story back in February.

Headline on BBC news story about Pat Robertson's latest controversial statements gets one of three right: "Top US evangelist targets Islam". Well, he's from the US. "Top"? "Evangelist"? I think not.

National Post shows an intuitive grasp of the obvious: Elected Senate "could change the way Canada is governed". Ya think?

via Nealenews.