Related question – why is Ramesh Ponnuru treated like some kind of deity in conservative internet circles? True, he’s capable of making cogent arguments, which is more than can be said for the rest of the Corner’s members. But I’ve never seen him produce anything that wasn’t conservative boilerplate, no matter how well-presented it was.

No one is that gullible.

Please?

Yes, but it’s also fascinating in a morbid sort of way. Jonah is a mental trainwreck: He can’t weigh evidence, he doesn’t bother evaluating the reliability of sources, he doesn’t seem interested in checking facts. I think he just reads the articles and says “Hmm, some of the people who believe X sound pretty wacky. Y, on the other hand, kind of sounds like the sort of thing that might be true. Well–Y it is! Time for beer and Cheetos.”

I remember that he once posted a request for information about one topic or another. He got a response and posted it. Then someone else wrote in saying the complete opposite, and he posted that too.

Then he got stuck. He literally did not know how to proceed. I mean, two random people on the Internet said entirely different things! What the heck? Well, must be ambiguous–moving on, moving on….

(Yes, I know it’s creepy that I remember this stuff, but for some strange reason I have a good memory for the arguments that people make. If only I had as good a memory for the links to those arguments….)

I was going to email him and ask him–he does respond sometimes–but my will failed me; I’ve spent so much time dealing with imbecility lately that I can’t

Anyway, I’m guessing that he believes that the attack on Matthew Shepard wasn’t a hate crime involving Shepard’s sexual orientation. As far as I can tell, the evidence for this belief is as follows:

(1) the murderers, who used a “gay panic defense” during the trial, now say that Shepard’s sexuality had nothing to do with it;

(2) the murderers’ girlfriend, who previously testified under oath that the murderers were looking to target a gay guy, now says that Shepard’s sexuality had nothing to do with it.

It’s obvious, isn’t it? The recent statements are clearly the reliable ones; after all, they say exactly what people like Jonah want to hear.

My guess is that he is one of the people who believe that the Matthew Shepherd murder was a simple robbery, not a hate crime.

The prosecution’s claim was that his killers pretended to be gay to win his trust, then robbed and brutally murdered him. This was based on the accounts of witnesses and the testimony of the murderers girlfriends, who said that they had previously discussed robbing a gay man by pretending to be gay.

The defense was initially “gay panic”: that they attempted to rob him but he made a pass and they freaked out, crucifying him on a fence, and pistol whipping his skull open like any normal straight man would do in that situation.

How either scenario makes it “not a hate crime” is beyond me, but in reichwing lala land it is another case in which the liberal media has fabricated discrimination. They do this so that they can oppress the pure majority and institute islamo-negroid-homo-commie-fascism. I guess it gets them off or something.

What you said. I think that this was particularly telling:

The event on Dec. 4, 2006 was consistently labeled a “schoolyard fight.” But witnesses described something much more horrific. Several black students, including those now known as the Jena 6, barricaded an exit to the school’s gym as they lay in wait for Justin Barker to exit. (It remains unclear why Mr. Barker was specifically targeted.)

Well that makes no sense. Too bad there isn’t anyone, anyone at all who could offer some insight into the motivation behind these savage acts.

No, but he already tried asking the white students. They said they didn’t understand it either. I guess black people must just be randomly and inexplicably aggressive like that. That’s what all this PC bullshit will get you. Give those people an inch…

http://youtube.com/watch?v=l7qKD-Ph7ds

- is TONS funnier.

Bonus feature: It’ll make Our Lady of the Impervious Southern Border Chastity Belt cry…