Ross “That Thing You” Douthat is on the Brokeback Mountain watch.

Do not miss Dean Barnett’s fabulous piece about Boston’s newest mosque and its attendant legal battles. It’s great stuff.

Galley Brother B.J. sends along this AP story about the European reaction to Tookie Williams’s execution. It contains this very strange formulation:

Williams was convicted in connection with four killings during a pair of armed robberies in 1979. But he never wavered from his claim of innocence and refused to confess to crimes he did not commit, even if doing so would save his life.

I’m not a student of this case, but Williams wasn’t convicted “in connection” with the killings–he was convicted for murdering four people. And so far as I can tell, only the fringey, Free-Mumia types believed that Williams did not commit these murders.

And then there’s the AP report’s strange, Darkness at Noon notion that the State somehow told Williams that they would stop the execution if he would only admit to the murders. Again, without knowing all the details of the case, I find it hard to believe that this happened.

(Also, if you read further down in the AP story, you’ll see that the reporters don’t find the moral pronouncements of the Vatican so objectionable when they fit with the journalists religious agenda. If the Vatican is against homosexual priests, then they’re hopeless retrogrades; but if they’re against the death penalty, then they’re our moral tutors. Funny how that works.)

In sum: The Europeans are idiots and the AP report is at least severely flawed, and maybe much worse. And yet, despite having to keep company with these people as well as the Hollywood idiots who spent last week parading for Tookie, his execution–like all executions–was a bad thing. In many ways, Tookie was the poster-child for the death penalty: Clearly, if you’re going to have capital punishment, it’s meant for bad guys like Williams.

But when it is avoidable, the state–we–should not be in the business of taking lives. For the broader arguments as to why, see Cardinal Dulles and Jody Bottum, both of whom do so better than I could hope to.

Update, 11:54 a.m.: Reader Jay Homnick cites Gov. Schwarzenegger’s statement on the Williams case as evidence that had Williams admitted his guilt, he would have been saved: Without an apology and atonement for these senseless and brutal killings there can be no redemption. In this case, the one thing that would be the clearest indication of complete remorse and full redemption is the one thing Williams will not do.”

I’m not sure that this is exactly what the governor means. Was the offer on the table for Williams? Or was Schwarzenegger using this idea of atonement as a smokescreen.

While I’m happy to believe in atonement, the idea that redemption should commute a death mark seems faulty to me. Tookie Williams or Carla Faye Tucker are no more deserving of life because they have reformed and no less deserving of life if they haven’t reformed. And how are we to judge genuine reformation and atonement, which is much harder to establish than guilt?

In the spirit of Brokeback Mountain, perhaps this story is worth mentioning. A Galley friend passes along this link to Outsports.com (no explanation needed), which is reporting on the recent sex scandal rocking a soccer team from Varna, Bulgaria.

Remember that scene in Any Given Sunday, in which the players are at a party complete with hookers and cocaine? Or do you perhaps recall the incident involving the Minnesota Vikings on cruise ships fully stocked with hookers? If so, don’t expect anything nearly like that to happen with MAX, Varna’s soccer team. Rather, when the stadium host walked into the locker room, he discovered the goalie engaged in some off-sides ball-handling with three teammates.

The men have since been expelled.

First of all, the coach says he noticed earlier some unusually friendly behavior among some of the teammates. But as he saw it, “I thought they were just drunk.” (Ah yes, that excuse.)

Second, the goalie was supposedly cited for sodomy when he was 15. With a goat.

Finally, the incident occurred only after the team had lost the game. Had they won, it would have been truly a come-from-behind victory.

Here’s Fark’s headling for this story: “Honda’s ASIMO robot now capable of menial office tasks like greeting visitors, making coffee, finding Sarah Connor.”

Larry Miller has a beautiful and moving piece about a boy who’s becoming a Marine.

… on the passing of comic genius Eugene McCarthy and everyman’s politician Richard Pryor. Or is it the other way around? Double obits, unfortunately timed as they are, can be a little confusing. But first, on Pryor: The man took scatalogical humor to a whole new level. I mean he really, um, pushed it. For that, I pay him homage. Pryor also starred in great films (at least I liked them) such as Silver Streak, Stir Crazy, The Toy, and, best of all, Brewster’s Millions. (The Toy is notable for not only matching Pryor with Jackie Gleason but also child-star Scott Schwartz, who later starred in New Wave Hookers 5 and The Wrong Snatch. Incidentally, Schwartz’s character’s name in The Toy? Master Eric Bates.)

Where was I? Oh right, Eugene McCarthy. He ran for president before I was born and his leanings aren’t exactly mine. But I did get a chance to hear him speak some 13 years ago at Georgetown. My friend and I went to the reception that followed, heading right for the hors d’oeuvres table. Suddenly the senator came up on us, placed his hands on our shoulders, and said, “I remember the kids on my campaign. They always came for the free food too.”

And right he was.

After reading this disappointed story on the new Xbox 360 in the Washington Post yesterday–titled “Where’s the ‘Wow’?”–now there’s this news of sluggish Xbox 360 sales in Japan.

Is Xbox 360 the new Dreamcast?

No way! Dreamcast was a superior system with unique capabilities launched before its time.