On the wisdom of the Manhattan mosque project

Cornell law professor Michael Dorf writing on manners v. morals as related to the construction of the planned Park51/Cordoba House.
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Common Sense 0, First Amendment 1

Fred Phelps is a disgusting individual. He, his family and the congregation of the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, KS represent the lowest underbelly of America… but regardless of that, they remain Americans and therefore the beneficiaries of the same Constitutional rights as the rest of us.

These despicable abusers of the Rights of Man have been mentioned in this space before [HERE] [HERE] and [HERE]. In that last link a court case was mentioned in which the Phelps crew had beaten a lawsuit [Snyder v. Phelps, et al] brought by the father of a Marine killed in Iraq after the Phelps family protested the funeral. 

The judge in the case ruled that in the United States of America, people have the right to believe anything they want, say anything they want, and in general to behave like ignorant idiots, so long as no physical harm is done.

Next came the 2006 law passed by the Missouri legislature, specifically targeting the Kansas church group, and severely restricting protests near funerals. Phelps sued, and won [Phelps-Roper v. Koster].

Yesterday a U.S. District Judge ruled the Missouri law violates the church’s right of free speech guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.

Judge Fernando Gaitan, although sympathetic to the argument that people attending a funeral deserve some protection, ruled that Missouri officials did not demonstrate that the protest restrictions served any significant government interest, nor had it been narrowly tailored to prevent the harm of interruptions of funeral services.

Several other states have enacted similar laws, and those too will likely fall upon appeal. Judge Gaitan had little option, considering the earlier federal appeals court decision that there was no compelling government interest in protecting people from unwanted speech outside their homes.

Court documents reveal that the Kansas church has held more than 42,000 pickets, including more than 500 at funerals. This fall SCOTUS is supposed to consider the appeal in Snyder v. Phelps, et al. I predict this too will fail. The fact that these idiots behave in this manner is disturbing, but fits the category of protected speech. The fact that they have the right to be idiots is written in our Constitution. 

Now, briefly consider the parallel of this case to the ongoing debate over the so-called Ground Zero Mosque… We may not like it, and it may seem a really insensitive thing to do... but there is no legal basis for denying it.

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What it takes to get elected in Texas...

...is for your name listed on the "R"ight side of the ballot. Whether or not you have any sense apparently makes no real difference.



In fairness, this kooky lady comes from the same city that elected "D" Sheila Jackson Lee.

UPDATE:
I've had it pointed out to me that Rep. Debbie Riddle is merely parroting what she heard from our beloved Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas).



In other words, Louie is continuing his long-standing practice of keeping bigots fed with fear. Apparently there are enough of the fearful in his East Texas district to keep him in office.

Shame. I keep hoping that one of these days we can sit down and have an honest conversation with folks, but I guess honesty doesn't get one reelected.

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"We didn't see him..."

Dallas police killed a motorist in a disabled vehicle. Two officers in a patrol cruiser rear-ended the disable vehicle while driving slightly above the speed limit. From the dash cam video, it appears they didn’t even see the car, even though the emergency flashers are evident in the video.

Watch the video.

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Sunday Funnies

Two chili recipes

Neither of the two following recipes are contest chili. These are for meals at home or to serve at the family reunion. Contest chili is a whole 'nother ball of wax. 

Regardless of contest or home consumption, Texas chili has two rules… one is hard and fast, the other not so much so.

RULE 1 – Beans are beans and chili is chili. Both make a good meal, but the two do not mix in the same pot.

RULE 2 – Tomato plants did not fare well in the desert southwest, so tomatoes don’t really belong in chili. The contest judges don't always agree with this assessment.

Recipe #1 – Easy Texas Chili

WARNING: Easy chili won’t be as good, but folks will still enjoy it. Most are accustomed to the crappy chili served at  restaurants, so this will be nectar to them. Best of all you can build it in an afternoon. Of course, like any chili, it would still be better if after cooking it was refrigerated overnight, reheated and served the next day.

Ingredients:

• 3 lbs. of beef (pork, venison or a mixture if you choose, but Texas chili is beef)
• ½ pound smoked bacon (NOT maple cured!)
• 2 large onions, chopped
• 2 Tb. ground cumin (more or less to taste)
• 1-2 Tb. chili powder (I like Gebhardts)
• 2-4 cloves garlic, minced (more or less to taste)
• Water
• Salt and pepper to taste, but do not salt until AFTER the mixture is cooked

Directions:

Cube the beef into small chunks, set aside. Chop up the bacon into ½” bits. Heat a large cast iron pot over a medium-high burner. Fry bacon until not quite crisp, remove and set aside leaving the fat in the pot. Add the beef to the pot and simmer in the bacon fat until nicely browned. Remove the beef, reduce the heat to medium and add the bacon back into the pot, then add onions and garlic and stir until onions are clear. Continue stirring as you add cumin and chili powder. Return the beef to the pot as you continue stirring, then pour in enough water to cover the mixture with about an inch to spare. Increase heat back to medium-high and bring to a boil. Allow to simmer slowly until the mixture is reduced to a bubbling slurry (about an hour and a half). Salt to taste.

Recipe 2 – Mulebreath’s Hell on the Bravo chili

Good chili isn’t easy. Good chili is time consuming and really clutters up a kitchen. Good chili is built over several steps, not simply cooked. The steps are called “dumps,” because the ingredients for each step are prepared, combined, then “dumped” into the pot at the appropriate time.

You are going to need two pots; one heavy skillet and one deep pot. I prefer cast iron for both, but glass or stainless works.

Ingredients:

Meat:

• ½ pound smoked bacon (NOT maple cured!)
• 3 pounds beef (not high cuts. Cheap meat is just fine for chili)

Veggies:

• 2 large Texas 1015’s (if you don’t know what that is, you’re a savage)
• 4 fat jalapenos (substitute serranos for spicier, or habaneras for hemorrhoid removal)
• 4 cloves garlic, minced (not crushed. Crushing is uncivilized)

Liquid:

• 1 quart beef stock
• 1 six-pack Ambar Dos Equis, Negra Modelo, Indio, Leon, or any good Mexican dark beer
• water

Spices:

• ¼ cup dried, ground chili peppers, preferably ancho or pasilla (NOTE: this is not chili powder)
• 1 Tb ground coriander seed
• 3 Tbs ground cumin seed
• 2 Tbs crushed Mexican oregano
• ½ tbsp white pepper
• Sea salt (not iodized)

Directions:

The night before starting this project open one of the beers. Leave it open and sitting out overnight. It should be warm and flat when you start cooking.

Start heating the skillet over medium-high heat. While heating, chop or coarse grind the bacon and the beef into ½” or smaller bits. Coarse chop the onion and mince the garlic, keep separate and set aside. Add bacon to the skillet and fry until not quite crisp, remove and set aside leaving the fat in the pan. Add the beef to the bacon fat and simmer until nicely browned. Remove the beef and set aside. Add ½ of your garlic and ½ of the onion to the bacon fat, simmering until the onion is clear. Remove from the fat a set aside.

1st dump: add beef stock to the big pot over medium-high heat. Pour in what is left of your bacon fat, add remaining ½ of your garlic and ½ of the onion, bring to a boil and reduce to simmer for ½ hour. Go to 2nd dump.

2nd dump: Add coriander, cumin, oregano, and white pepper. Simmer 10 minutes, then go to dump 3.

3rd dump: Add ground chilies and simmer another ½ hour, stirring frequently. Go to 4th dump.

4th dump: Add bacon, beef, remaining garlic and onion, along with your flat beer. Split the jalapenos and toss them in. Simmer another 2 hours at medium-low heat, stirring often to prevent scorching. Add salt to taste. and water as needed to maintain consistency. Remove the pot from the fire and allow to cool. Refrigerate overnight, re-warm (add water to adjust consistency if need be) and serve. To pretty it up some, toss in a cupped palm full of fresh, chopped red and green peppers, then serve before they have time to soften too much. Habaneras add a nice orange color too, but those are not for the faint of heart.

5th dump: You may have noticed this process takes somewhere north of three hours, with probably another couple of hours waiting for the pot to cool enough to go in the ice box... and then you have to wait until the next day to eat. 

Bummer.

But there is salvation. Using that same mathematical acuity you used earlier, you may have noticed that one subtracted from six leaves five… and figured out what to do with the remainder of that six-pack.

Cheers!

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Chili; the State Food of Texas

The evolution of Texas chili, last of a 4-part series

Chili is a controversial dish even among Texans. As we discussed in the previous segment, the only rule that is hard and fast is that beans do not belong in a Texas chili recipe. Other fillers (e.g. corn meal) are frowned upon as well but won't necessarily get the cook run out of town on a rail. Beans may get you shot, but beyond this all rules seem to be rather polymorphous.

The universal truth is that Texas’ chili aficionados are passionate. (I've said that before, haven't I?) Indeed, we’re so  passionate that we hold regular competitions to determine the King (or Queen) of the Texas chili world. There is a bit of debate as to the date of the first chili competition, a regular on the  competition circuit by the name of Ranger Bob Ritchey may have found the truth.

Ritchey did a little research, finding several archived newspaper articles written about the 1952 Texas State Fair Chili Championship. Although many newspaper, magazine and cyber articles have been written claiming the first Chili Championship to be the 1967 Terlingua cook-off, the articles Ritchie found prove that to be untrue.

Take for instance the October 5, 1952 headline from the now defunct Dallas Daily Times Herald, stating that "Woman Wins But Men Do Well in Chili Event." The story following the headline describes how Mrs. F. G. Ventura of Dallas won the Texas State Fair contest and her recipe was declared the "Official State Fair of Texas Chili Recipe." Mrs. Ventura was crowned the first ever "World Champion Chili Cook," a title she retained for fifteen years.

The State Fair event was organized by ex-newspaper man Joe. E. Cooper as a stunt to promote his newly published book, titled With or Without Beans - An Informal Biography of Chili. The competition had no rules as to ingredients, other than banning beans. The first year bragged 55 contestants, judged by a panel of five.

Speaking of the number of judges, Cooper said, "It’ll take a lot of judges because after the first two or three spoonfuls of good, hot Texas-style chili, the fine edge wears off even an expert chili judge's taste buds... It'll be a hot job but one that no true Texan will shirk."

Cooper didn’t live to see the popularity to which chili cook-offs have risen. He died three months after that first competition.

Possibly the best known and most well documented of the early chili competitions is the 1967 Terlingua cook-off. Terlingua is a ghost town and  former mining community, located in one of the most remote areas of the state. You must want to be there, or else you are very lost, if you find yourself in Terlingua. Getting there requires much effort. The nearest airport of any size (if you don’t include Lajitas International) is 240 miles away in El Paso, or 310 miles to San Antonio.

The 1967 competition pitted two well known, albeit self-proclaimed chili champs. Dallas newspaper reporter, Homer "Wick" Fowler, challenged New York humorist and author, H. Allen Smith to a showdown because of a story written by Smith and published in the August, 1967 issue of Holiday Magazine.

The article, titled Nobody Knows More About Chili Than I Do, made the wild claim that no one in Texas could cook a proper pot of chili. Smith bragged that "no living man, I repeat, can put together a pot of chili as ambrosial, as delicately and zestfully flavorful, as the chili I make." His recipe, which he published with the article, called for beans.

When journalist and author Frank X. Tolbert read Smith’s article, he was righteously offended. Tolbert, author of the definitive tome on Texas chili, A Bowl of Red, began something akin to open journalistic warfare. Tolbert wrote a regular column for the Dallas Morning News, and commenced taking shots at Smith from that pulpit, challenging Texas chili cooks to prove Smith wrong. Wick Fowler stood up for the challenge.

The match was on, and although the competition received a huge amount of publicity, and attendance swelled the little ghost town with over 5,000 spectators, the climax was an anticlimactic tie when Dave Witts, a Dallas lawyer, self-proclaimed mayor of Terlingua, and also the tie-breaker judge, spit his chili on the ground.

Sports Illustrated writer Gary Cartwright described the scene, “[T]he blindfolded judge number three, David Witts, was given a spoonful of chili which he promptly spit out all over the referee's foot. "Then he went into convulsions. He rammed a white handkerchief down his throat as though he were cleaning a rifle barrel, and in an agonizing whisper Witts pronounced himself unable to go on."

Witts declared that his taste buds were "ruint," and said they would have to do the whole thing over again next year. Terlingua has hosted a chili competition every year since. Both Wick Fowler and Frank Tolbert opened chili parlors that have survived the owners. Tolbert’s in Grapevine sells more beer than chili, but his original Texas Red is still at the top of the menu.

The group hosting the Terlingua event for many years was the Texas Chili Appreciation Society, now called the Chili Appreciation Society International. The Society now has some involvement in over 500 competitions worldwide, raising about a million dollars for charities every year. The 2009 Terlingua event hosted over 500 competitors. The 2010 event will be November 3^rd - 6^th.

In 1977, chili lovers and manufacturers in the state of Texas successfully lobbied the Texas legislature to have chili proclaimed the official "state food of Texas, in recognition of the fact that the only real 'bowl of red' is that prepared by Texans."

Amen.

Tomorrow I will offer you a couple of my own recipes for your examination and/or approval. In the mean time, click on the banner below to go to the CASI site. Past winning recipes may be found there.

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