On the HOME FRONT

Some freedom of association is not permitted.

A Southern Tier prosecutor was fired yesterday over his attendance at a conference of “white preservationists.”

Assistant District Attorney Michael Regan was terminated following an investigation by his boss, Allegany County District Attorney Terrence Parker, who said he had received numerous e-mails expressing concern about Regan’s presence at a meeting of the New Century Foundation in northern Virginia last week.

Would he have been fired for attending an NAACP meeting or a Nation of Islam meeting? Freedom of association must be universal.


And UNC student rampages over cartoons?

Authorities say 23-year-old Mohammed Reza Taheriazar drove a silver Jeep Grand Cherokee drove into The Pit at the UNC-Chapel Hill campus around noon Friday, injuring five students and a visiting scholar.

Police said they would charge Taheriazar, who was a UNC student as recently as Fall 2005, with multiple counts of assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill. Authorities are not releasing a motive, but they did say the incident was intentional.

It's not too much of a stretch to think that this is related to the "Mohammed" cartoon flap at UNC.

It was a cartoon, chill.