Yeah, Californians are suing each other over exhaust emissions now. They’re nuts over there. Must be something in the air.

This BBC report says a judge ruled against the state in a case brought by California’s former attorney-general, Bill Lockyer against six car makers. The case claimed that the car makers had created a “public nuisance” by making “millions of vehicles that collectively emit massive quantities of carbon dioxide”. Presumably they intended to be a less ambiguous, since I’m sure your average Californian would have considered the failure to make millions of vehicles for them an even greater public nuisance.

The court ruled that there is no law about what level of emissions constitutes a “public nuisance”, and laws are for elected legislators to write. Kudos to the judge for recognising this important principle. The losing side — the state government, that is — told the BBC that:

…the state brought the action on behalf of the people of California because national authorities had failed to act over setting emission targets.

“We do think that because the federal government has failed to act, this is a judicial obligation to jump in where those entities had failed to act.”

So why doesn’t the Californian government not sue itself to force itself to pass the required legislation? And if it was the federal government’s fault (of course it’s Bush’s fault!), why does the state government sue a bunch of innocent citizens who were only trying to solve the nuisance of having to walk everywhere in the brain-addling Californian sun?

Russia ‘worried’ by Iran war risk — BBC News, 18 September 2007

The news is spreading among Scandinavian cartoonists, clearly. It’s not that you offend, it’s who you offend.

A Swedish artist, Lars Vilks, has gone into hiding after Al Qaeda in Iraq took time off from sabotaging Iraqi democracy and killing Iraqi civilians to make death threats against him. His crime? Oh, the usual. He offended Islam. He calls its prophet unknown, and the religion outdated. And then he drew a picture of a stray dog with a human head and a turban to illustrate. It’s tacky, granted, but if I were religious, it wouldn’t exactly shatter my faith.

Now the European Council for Fatwa and Research has penned what has been described simply as a condemnation of the death threats. It’s much more than that. The fatwa is in itself a threat, at the very least to freedom of expression.

Here is the text in full:

1. We condemn the caricatures and see them as an insult to the Muslim religion, but also as an insult to all people’s religion.
2. We believe in a free press and work to widen the limits of free speech. But offending that which is sacred to other people is not part of freedom of speech, it is a violation of human rights.
3. We think that the caricatures contradict our effort towards positive integration among different European societies, of which Islam is part.
4. We think that the caricatures are undermining our effort to create a dialogue between religions.
5. We call on European governments to protect Muslims and other believers against offending their religion.
6. We ask religious and human rights groups to discourage people from offending religions and what is sacred.
7. We distance ourselves from all acts of violence including murder, because as in the case of offending other groups this contradicts the teachings of Islam.
8. We call on European legislative assemblies to pass laws criminalizing offense of any religion and what is sacred.
9. We ask all Muslims in Europe to be prudent and defend what is sacred to them through existing democratic laws and we condemn everything that has to do with violence and criminal acts.
10. We stand by our goal to help European Muslims to contribute to the wealth and prosperity of their countries and we insist that the crazy caricature shall not stop this important process.

Sheesh. These people want to criminalise offense against any religion, and they talk about “positive integration”? Haven’t they heard about this Enlightenment thing? It’s sort of a big part of the European tradition. Flemming Rose has a more detailed fisking of the fatwa.

Michael Moore, call your office. Do autopsies fall under the “socialised medicine” rubric? Perhaps not, but in Venezuela, you get them free anyway. Even if you don’t really need them. On the other hand, Reuters says it couldn’t contact officials to confirm the story, so maybe it’s just media propaganda for the Bolivarian Valhalla of Venezuela.

(Hat tip: The Scoundrel.)