Chuck Norris is living in northeastern New Mexico and claiming to be the Messiah and, according to state officials, has been having sex with his followers who know him as Michael Travesser [1]. Not really. That’s Wayne Bent, 66, pastor of Lord Our Righteousness Church [2] of Strong City, New Mexico, anointed as Messiah in the year 2000, seen here in Delta Force 2—sorry, I mean, in his picture on the church web site [3], which, by the way, is one of the more entertaining Whack Job Prophecy sites I’ve ever come across.

Yearning For Sanity Ranch

Now that we know the raid on the Yearning For Zion Ranch near Eldorado, Texas, was caused by a false allegation [4] made by a person who lied about who she was and what she knew, aren’t there civil liberties protections that should kick in for members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints whose families have been torn apart? At the very least, if they want to do further criminal investigations, the children should be returned to their parents until charges are filed. It seems incredible that anyone should have to make this point, but the police are not allowed to seize 436 people without charges in order to make a case against one parent who, it turns out, is probably falsely accused. And the taking of DNA samples [5] used to be dependent on a person’s consent. Apparently that protection has also flown out the window in this case of excessive Old West justice, even by West Texas standards. It doesn’t help that officials of the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services continue to make inflammatory claims [6] such as “evidence of abuse” without producing a shred of evidence or submitting the findings to a court. Why aren’t more people bothered by the lack of judicial review? A court is the only place where the state would have to prove its right to snatch children and teenagers. A great deal is being made out of the issue of underage pregnancy, even though underage pregnancy has not been, up till now, grounds for removing a girl from her family. Pretty soon now, if we don’t adjudicate this, someone is going to start using the phrase “McMartin Day Care,” and that someone is likely to be me.

And God Created Brigitte

More evidence that we’ll never figure out the French: on June 3rd, Brigitte Bardot is expected to be found guilty for the fifth time [7] of inciting racial hatred against Muslims, which is a crime in France. Things that we would just call nutty protected speech France gets all legalistic about, even though this is the same country that doesn’t think Christians (or any other religion) should be allowed to proselytize in the public square. Brigitte’s latest offense is a letter she sent to President Sarkozy accusing the Muslims of destroying France. We can’t let that kind of thing go unpunished or this headstrong 73-year-old might start dancing barefoot in the basement of a jazz club like she did in And God Created Woman. Does anyone think it’s ironic that the French feel the need to punish people for being rude and insulting?

Mumbledymouth Jesus

The Passion of the Christ, you may recall, was performed in Latin and Hebrew, but mainly in Aramaic, because Jesus and the disciples spoke Aramaic and those were the three languages spoken in Israel at the time of Christ. Since the town of Malula in Syria is one of the last remaining Aramaic-speaking enclaves [8] anywhere in the world, the movie was shown there recently—and nobody could understand it! Partly this is because there were so many different dialects used in the movie, but mostly it was just because the pronunciation of the actors sucked.

He Should Have Made It Clear That He Intended to Shoot Non-Russians

This doesn’t make a lick of sense. Phillip H. Miles, pastor of Christ Community Church in Conway, South Carolina, is doing three years in a Moscow prison [9] for bringing a single box of ammo for a deer rifle into Russia. It was a gift for a fellow pastor in Perm, in the Ural Mountains, where hunting is not only common but you can pretty much shoot anything, up to and including Chechens and Jews.