Oh, My God! Sharia Law IS CALLING FROM INSIDE THE HOUSE!

Latest Newspaper Column:

It seems that "Sharia law," that favorite bugbear of the hard right, is back, and it weighs heavily on the fevered minds of some lawmakers.

#The latest crusader is Alabama state Sen. Gerald Allen. Allen has introduced a bill in that state's legislature that's very much like a measure voted in by referendum in Oklahoma a few months ago, in that it bans the states' courts "from using Sharia law or international law in making legal decisions."

#Never mind the fact that, as in Oklahoma, no one has ever used or attempted to use Sharia law (a term which Allen admitted to a reporter he couldn't define) in the state courts.

#That's not the point, Allen insists.

#"It's not about what's happening right now," he told a local paper. "I'm thinking about 10 years down the road, 20, 30, 40. Time has an effect on these things, and I'm thinking about the future."

#Got that? It's not that Sharia law is a threat right now. It's that, 20 to 40 years in the future, someone might try to impose it, so we've got to be ready.

#Good to know that in a state facing a $110 million budget deficit, unemployment rates of up to 18 percent in some counties, and a corresponding flight of its citizens from the state, someone has the wisdom and foresight to take the long view and prepare for the time when the overwhelmingly Christian state known as the "Heart of Dixie" might possibly become a hotbed of Islamist agitation.

#After all, it's happened in other places. Just ask failed Nevada senatorial candidate Sharron Angle, who managed to turn what looked like an easy pickup of a Senate seat from the feckless Harry Reid into a debacle by, essentially, talking like a raving loon.

#Responding to a question about Muslims "taking over a city in Michigan," Angle responded, "First of all, Dearborn, Mich., and Frankford, Texas, are on American soil, and under constitutional law. Not Sharia law. And I don't know how that happened in the United States. It seems to me there is something fundamentally wrong with allowing a foreign system of law to even take hold in any municipality or government situation in our United States."

#Only problem with Angle's rather confusingly phrased expression of outrage is: First, Dearborn's "government situation" is indeed still solidly under American law, with American cops and judges and everything; and second, Frankford, Texas, the other city Angle was so exercised about, doesn't exist. It's a former suburb of Dallas that was absorbed into that metropolis in 1975.

#Who knows, though? Maybe Angle was talking about Muslims from "20, 30, 40 years down the road" who'd learned to travel back in time to before 1975 and impose Sharia law in a vanished Texas -suburb. You never can tell with these people.

#It would be easy to dismiss this nonsense as fringe craziness from a backwoods state legislator and a rejected Senate candidate. But the newly elected Republican majority in the House apparently intends to try to mainstream anti-Sharia hysteria.

#Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert told radio host Frank Gaffney (a guy so insane he insists right-wing icon Grover Norquist is a Muslim agent) that he was going to "push for hearings" on "creeping Sharia." Florida uber-wingnut congressman Allen West has indicated he wants to do the same.

#Yes, my friends, fear is where it's at this year. Fear of the Creeping Sharia. Fear of the Stealth Jihadist, the guy who only looks like a moderate, reasonable Muslim, but luckily for us poor saps, those in the know (and in the GOP) can see that inwardly he's cackling and plotting the next 9/11.

#Which is why, this past week, we had Rep. Peter King's Homeland Security Dog and Pony Show in which he trotted out carefully selected witnesses to prove that, while he's not actually saying all Muslims are terrorists, he is saying they all would be happy to kill us in our sleep and convert our babies to Islam.

#Because fear sells. Fear distracts. Fear, King and his fellow travelers hope, will keep us from noticing that they have no real answers to the problems that plague us, just the same failed coddle-the-rich, screw-the-middle-class policies that dug this hole for us in the first place.

"Would You Please Fucking Stop?"

Ursula K. LeGuin critiques swearing, particularly the use of the word "fuck"--and does it thoughtfully, without the usual prissiness common to such pieces. It's worth a look.

Foundlings: Abandoned Novels

I'm blogging today at Murderati on the novels that we never finish. Or don't we?

"Shakespeare Got to Get Paid, Son"

Chuck Wendig yanks you upright and slaps your silly face for giving him those Lies Writers Tell. Check it out.

JACK'S BACK!

THE DEVIL'S RIGHT HAND, my 2005 debut novel featuring North Carolina bounty hunter Jack Keller, is now available for Kindle, Nook, and other e-book formats. And for a limited time, as a special introductory offer, you can enjoy this Shamus-nominated thriller for only 99 cents, downloaded in moments!

If you missed it the first time, now's your chance to read the book that the Washington Post called "A fine example of redneck noir" and Booklist called a "supercharged crime fiction debut."

J.A. Konrath put it best: "Jack Keller kicks ass!"

Worse Than the Romans: The Charlie Sheen Freak Show

Latest Newspaper Column: The Pilot

(I'm not sure why this ran Friday on the website rather than the usual Sunday, but what the hell):

You know, there are times I look around me and I go, "Wow, we are worse than the Romans."

Oh, sure, the Romans put on brutal gladiatorial contests in which men fought each other to the death, or fought against wild beasts.

But you know what the Romans didn't do? They didn't put their mentally ill in the middle of the Coliseum and encourage them to rave for the amusement of the people. Which, when you think about it, is exactly what the media are doing with "Two and a Half Men" star Charlie Sheen.

Sheen's been notorious as a Hollywood bad boy for years now, what with the hookers, the alcohol, the cocaine, the porn-star girlfriends and whatnot. It was actually pretty shrewd casting when "Two and a Half Men" producer Chuck Lorre hired Sheen to play the boozing, womanizing Charlie Harper, brother to the nervous and wimpy Allan, played by Jon Cryer (this generation's answer to Don Knotts).

Sheen's been pretty amusing as a drunken whoremonger on TV. In real life, however, the act has been less funny. A whole lot less, in fact, with Sheen being arrested for domestic violence and trashing hotel rooms, going in and out of rehab, and generally acting, as we say down South, like he's got no raising at all.

All of this was bad enough, but not, unfortunately, uncommon enough in Hollywood to grab the front pages. Nor did it result in the same sort of employment consequences you or I would suffer if we were frequently seen in public completely blitzed, in the company of adult movie actresses. In fact, Sheen's income kept going up as the show became a mainstay of CBS's prime-time line up.

Then Sheen started imploding in a particularly flamboyant fashion that even Hollywood couldn't ignore. He began giving interviews in which he ranted and raved, calling producer Lorre a "maggot" and other endearments not suitable for a family newspaper. Not surprisingly, Lorre immediately suspended production on the show, because let's face it, if you call your boss a "maggot," you're probably going to get canned, even if you are Charlie Sheen.

The suspension apparently acted upon Sheen's mind in much the same way a red cape acts upon the mind of a maddened bull. Suddenly, Charlie Sheen is everywhere, giving interviews right and left on "20/20," "Good Morning America," TMZ.com, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, etc. He's given an interview to everyone but "Highlights" magazine, and I wouldn't be surprised to see him on the cover of the next issue.

And what bizarre interviews they are. Sheen claims to have "tiger blood" and "Adonis DNA." He's also repeatedly called himself a "warlock," which upset a group of "actual" warlocks so much they promised to put a "binding spell" (which is apparently the magical equivalent of a restraining order) on him.

He brags that "most of the time - and this includes naps - I'm an F-18, bro. I'll destroy you in the air," and gripes that he's tired of pretending like he's not special. "I'm tired of pretending like I'm not a total bitchin' rock star from Mars," he says. "You can't process me with a normal brain."

I'll confess, I've laughed at some of this blather. But I'm getting more and more uncomfortable about it. When you read and hear the increasingly grandiose and delusional things Sheen's said and get a look at his manic, beady little eyes, you can tell that this guy isn't just drunk or coked up. He is out of his mind. He is mentally ill. And yet every media outlet in the country seems positively joyful at the opportunity to put the crazy guy on screen and poke him with a stick to see what nutty thing he'll say next.

It's becoming the high-tech equivalent of the old carnival freak shows, where people would gather to see some poor addled soul bite the heads off live chickens and other humiliating acts. Charlie Sheen hasn't actually bitten the head off a chicken yet, but if he does, you can bet that someone will be there with a camera, ready to put it on the air and on the Internet.

Then we really will be worse than the Romans.

Win a Kindle or Nook from One Very Righteous Chick

The supremely cool and outrageously talented Toni McGee Causey gives a shout out to LAWYERS, GUNS AND MONEY as part of her contest in which one can win a FREE Kindle or Nook over at her blog:

J.D. has a talent for creating characters you feel like you know, deeply, from your own life, and showing you the tensions that they're under that threaten to crack and break them wide open—and like the ladies above, he'll have you turning pages until the wee hours of the morning, because you won't want to put it down until you get to the end.

Head over, enter the contest (I mean, free stuff, amirite?) and show Toni some love. She's not only a kick-ass writer, she's good people as well.