Good news, bad news

Apparently it’s not true that Ol Beady Eyes will be offered the chance to visit Ground Zero when he heads to New York next week. The idea had caused quite a stir in the Big Apple, but apparently it was all some class of misunderstanding:

Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly caused considerable confusion earlier today when he suggested that the request was still pending. In fact, police officials said later, the request — made at a meeting that included the Secret Service and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey — was denied for reasons of security and safety. They added that Mr. Ahmadinejad’s aides had asked that he be allowed into the pit, where construction is taking place.

Unfortunately, Columbia president Lee Bollinger has extended an invitation to the Iranian president to speak on campus.

This is, of course, madness.

The Columbia student body has a appallingly poor reputation for extending a courteous ear to visitors of late, and have at least twice in recent years shouted down speakers whose views they find unappealing, including the Minuteman Project’s Jim Gilchrist, the National Review’s Dinesh D’souza and former UC Regent Ward Connerly. All of these worthies were guilty only of daring to speak of unpopular ideas in an academic setting where ideas are meant to be tested. That alone was sufficient to be mau-mau’d by 21st Century Rousseauians who might not like what you say, but who will fight to your death to prevent you from saying it.

But Ol’ Beady Eyes is the president of a thuggish, dictatorial regime that brutalizes non-conformists, rejects womens’ rights, hangs children for the crime of being raped and sponsors murderous terrorist mayhem – the ultimate violation of human rights. When it isn’t busy preaching genocide and developing a nuclear power program with significantly suspicious “dual use” potential. I mean, Iran’s economy is even arranged around petroleum exports that contribute to global warming.

What can Bollinger be thinking? Those Columbia kids are going to eat Ahmadinejad up!

Right?