Idiots of the Week

This is just a sampling. There aren't enough hours in the day to find all the idiots.

The NY Times on the Pope's insult to Muslims:

The world listens carefully to the words of any pope. And it is tragic and dangerous when one sows pain, either deliberately or carelessly. He needs to offer a deep and persuasive apology, demonstrating that words can also heal.

(For what? Telling the truth?)
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from the Detroit Free Press:

Lebanon's top Shi'ite cleric demanded an apology. In Turkey, the ruling party likened the pontiff to Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini and accused him of reviving the mentality of the Crusades.

(Is that what the Pope's doing? Let's roll.)

"We do not accept the apology through Vatican channels ... and ask him to offer a personal apology -- not through his officials," Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, Lebanon's most senior Shi'ite cleric, told worshippers in Beirut. "We want him groveling in a state of permanent public dhimmitude."

(All right, you caught me. I put that last sentence in his mouth.)
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From an Indian paper:

Pope apologises for Islam speech

(He did?)

From Fox News:

Vatican says pontiff upset Muslims have been offended by remarks he made about Islam, but stops short of apology

(Can someone nail this down?)

Further from Fox:

Palestinians wielding guns and firebombs attacked five churches in the West Bank and Gaza on Saturday, following remarks by Pope Benedict XVI that angered many Muslims.

(Religion of peace, religion of peace, May this mantra never cease...)

George Awad, a cleric at the Greek Orthodox church in Nablus, said he and other Christians have apologized for the pope's remarks and urged Muslims to use restraint.

(Restraint? Specifics please. And how did they respond to your apology on behalf of the Pope? Did you get the Pope's permission? Did you apologize before or after the five churches were burned?)
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Hugo Chavez, emperor of Venezuela:

"...it was the U.S. imperial power itself that planned and carried out this terrible terrorist deed against its own people... To justify its aggressions that promptly ensued against Afghanistan [and] Iraq."

From ABC:

Kevin Barrett believes the U.S government might have destroyed the World Trade Center. Steven Jones is researching what he calls evidence that the twin towers were brought down by explosives detonated inside them, not by hijacked airliners. These men aren't uneducated junk scientists: Barrett will teach a class on Islam at the University of Wisconsin this fall, over the protests of more than 60 state legislators. Jones is a tenured physicist at Brigham Young University...

(Barrett and Jones, meet Hugo Chavez)

David Gabbard, an East Carolina education professor, acknowledges this isn't his field, but says "I'm smart enough to know ... that fire from airplanes can't melt steel."

(The professor also knows that cows can't jump over the moon)

From Judy Wood, "until recently an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Clemson University":

"If the U.S. government is lying about how the buildings came down, anything else they say cannot be believed," she said. "So why would they want to tell us an incorrect story if they weren't part of it?"

(I know she's just a mechanical engineer, but I was wondering if we could see that in the form of a syllogism. She was denied tenure, btw, though her Dept. Chairman said it had nothing to do with her "opinions.")