When you run a news aggregation service that’s controlled by algorithms, sometimes unfortunate things will happen. Like you may display a picture of a terrorist next to an article about Obama family friends. Whoops:

On the deck after the snow became easier to pack. Awesome.

..should people protest his funeral? From a reader of Dan Savage’s blog:

Is anyone preparing to protest the eventual funeral of Fred Phelps? I really hope I’m not the first to think of this. The guy is—what? Eighty? Someone should probably start making plans now. I think the event calls for a big ol’ jazz funeral. Call up the Patriot Guard Riders, some VFWs, a few pride parades, maybe the Anti-Defamation League, invite anyone and everyone who was protested or maligned or attacked by the Westboro Baptist Church over the years. Everyone meets up, you get a brass band to play a dirge as everyone marches to the cemetery—no reason you can’t take the opportunity to illustrate dignity in the face of grief, if you wanted to provide them an example—and then, after the burial, everybody goes nuts. Think Carnival, think Rio, but in the middle Kansas.

I am seriously torn on this one. On one hand, Fred Phelps and his church/family are seriously demented, evil, funeral-protesting pieces of human garbage. It seems only right that they should experience the same disrespect at the demise of their loved ones that they’ve visited on so many other grieving families. If anyone deserves that kind of treatment, they do. This is my first, immediate reaction to the above.

On the other hand, just because the Phelps family has a completely twisted sense of morality doesn’t give us a free pass to act just like them. It’s the same reason we shouldn’t torture terrorists: because it says something about who we are. I think, to me, it’s more important to not be a funeral protester, or a torturer, than to get revenge on a bunch of assholes. And so, in spite of some of my baser instincts, I say let the prick die in the peace he denied so many others and be forgotten by everyone but the miserable progeny he leaves behind.