“The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet Muhammed,” said our president fatuously, while pretending that a video tape made by Nakoula Basseley Nakoula had somehow contributed to the killing of four Americans in Benghazi. Nakoula remains in a federal prison for posting that video in violation of his parole on bank fraud charges.

In Britain, after Muslims beheaded a British soldier — a husband and father — in broad daylight on a London Street, the Daily Mail reports that a man has been arrested and charged for making anti-religious (presumably anti Islamic) remarks on Twitter.

“People should stop and think about what they say on social media before making statements as the consequences could be serious,” said the detective inspector on the case. Fatuously.

In Sweden, Muslims have been rioting, burning schools and cars, for nearly a week. Almost all news reports refer to these Islamic thugs merely as “youths,” and many are blaming the Swedes for “inequality.” Likewise fatuously.

In light of such Islamic violence — and in light of such fatuous, mealy-mouthed cowardice and appeasement in response — I think it only fair to post comedian Steven Crowder’s incredibly rude and equally hilarious smackdown between Jesus and (Not) Muhammed. Billy Hallowell over at The Blaze reports Crowder’s been receiving death threats over it. Let’s hope he stays safe and lives to laugh another day. The future, I very much hope, belongs to crazy clowns like him.

More: Will the Muslim Unrest in Sweden Spread to Other European Countries?

It’s odd. Finding God in middle age brought more joy and peace into my life than I ever thought to expect, and yet listening to people talk about religion and reading modern writers on the subject often leaves me cold, alienated. I don’t care how brilliantly they refute the atheists. I don’t care whom they think God wants me to sleep with, or how they believe I should say my prayers. When they tell me I cannot call myself a Christian unless I condemn what they condemn and despise whom they despise, it makes me faintly nauseous. And though I’ve read many sentences that begin “If you only knew your Bible, you would see…” I’ve never reached the end of any of them.

What good religious discourse does — what good religious writing does — what they do for me, at least — is reorient my spirit toward its lodestar, which is Christ. For some reason, this is less likely to be achieved through flashy logic and pompous denunciations than through humble seeking and painfully honest self-examination. Go figure.

At any rate, here’s a lovely little book of really good religious writing: Strange Gods, by Elizabeth Scalia, who is also known by her blogging name The Anchoress. For reasons I’ll explain, it is an excellent corrective to our ferocious historical moment.

I was first led to the Anchoress by — who else? — Instapundit, (Him By Whom All Good Things are Linked!). I was taken with the gracefulness of her prose and the graciousness of her outlook and often found them an antidote to the fever of political confrontation. It’s not that she doesn’t have her opinions, she just usually manages to remain open-hearted toward her opposition while expressing them. No common thing these days and no mean trick either.

In Strange Gods, subtitled “Unmasking the Idols in Everyday Life,” she examines a few of the infinite ways in which she and all the rest of us break the first commandment. She speaks personally and movingly about how an excess of attention to ego, ideas, ideology, coolness, sex — even the films made from Jane Austen novels! — can position these false idols between ourselves and the source of all goodness.

“Why do people allow their relationship with God to become disoriented? Sadly, the problem usually starts with love. The human heart craves attention and love — love is the common longing of our lives. We may search for a career, or wealth, or status, but the desire to be loved and valued is usually at the root of our strivings… Sometimes, discouraged or impatient in our search, we chase illusions…”

Some of you have been following the news these last couple of weeks and thinking, “This is really scary.”

I’ll show you scary:

Download the free app here.

Haunting Melissa — the first-ever app movie — produced by Neal Edelstein and with a script by me — got a nice launch this week. The ghost story that pushes itself to your mobile i-device got coverage from ABC, Fox, Bloomberg and CNN, among dozens of other places. It was named Best App of the Day by the Best App of the Day namers. And has been climbing rapidly up the bestseller lists. There’s a cool teaser in the post below.

It’s a free download. Make sure to turn on the push notifications and to use a headset. And let me know what you think.

The first ever app movie, Haunting Melissa, is now available, exclusively for iPhone and iPad – hit the link to download for free, or just visit the app store and search the title. It is a truly cool and innovative device that sends you installments of the ghost story over time with lots of surprises. It was conceived and directed by my friend Neal Edelstein and written by me. Please check it out. Here’s the trailer:

CBS News anchorman and Ted Baxter lookalike Scott Pelley said recently of mainstream news: “Our house is on fire. … We’re getting the big stories wrong over and over again.”

Well, no wonder, if the stories out of Politico are true, and CBS News is actually trying to fire their reporter — and I do mean their one reporter — Sharyl Attkisson. Attkisson’s sin, according to the story, is reporting the news, specifically the news regarding the administration’s shameful behavior before, during and after the slaughter of four Americans by Islamic terrorists in Benghazi last year. The Daily Caller goes further and connects this dot to the fact that the president of CBS News has a brother in the White House.

Those of us with a humorous turn of mind can’t help thinking of the famous line from the film Dr. Strangelove: “Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here! This is the War Room!” Only now it’s “You can’t report in here! This is the News Room!”

Well, get used to it, Mr. Pelley. As our mainstream news media is forced to stretch itself further and further to disguise the nature of reality from its audience, I guess we’re going to find out where and whether some inelastic measure of journalistic integrity snaps any of them back into place. An abortionist massacres babies bringing the nature of abortion into question — they can’t report that. Gun violence plummets while gun ownership soars, bringing the motivation of gun control into question — they can’t report that.  And this historic administration is proving itself historically bad for the nation, bringing its laughably under-qualified leader into question — and they certainly can’t report that.  So sooner or later Scott Pelley and his ilk are going to have to choose whether to tell some measure of the truth or just stare into the camera with a crazy-ass look in their eyes while murmuring another famous movie line — this one from Don’t  Say A Word (based on a book by yours truly): “I’ll never tell!”

Comedian Steven Crowder and a mysterious stranger share table talk on the scandal that never was:

I’m really excited about this. My buddy Neal Edelstein — now the overlord of his own company Hooked Digital Media — has created this brilliant new app to, in his words, “fill a void in today’s entertainment landscape by creating original filmed stories for viewing directly on mobile and tablet devices.” It’s cutting edge stuff — just the sort of thing I’ve been waiting for — and I’m really thrilled that his first film, the ghost story Haunting Melissa, has a teleplay by yours truly. I also co-created the story along with Neal.

I’ve had to keep my mouth shut about this for a long time — and even now I’m not allowed to say much about it — but I’ll say more as we reach the release date. Meanwhile, you can pick up a little more information on some these horror movie sites, like Shock Till You Drop and JoBlo.

[There are updates at the end of this post.]

Well, look, when the left-wing media lands a punch, you got to take it, fair and square. Turns out one of the few open conservative activists in Hollywood has been hiding a past life as a Holocaust denier. He once recanted, but it was fake. He’s still mealy-mouthed on the subject. This is from the Guardian, a socialist newspaper in the UK:

To those who knew him, or thought they knew him, he was a cerebral, fun-loving gadfly who hosted boozy gatherings for Hollywood’s political conservatives. David Stein brought right-wing congressmen, celebrities, writers and entertainment industry figures together for shindigs, closed to outsiders, where they could scorn liberals and proclaim their true beliefs.

Over the past five years Stein’s organisation, Republican Party Animals, drew hundreds to regular events in and around Los Angeles, making him a darling of conservative blogs and talkshows. That he made respected documentaries on the Holocaust added intellectual cachet and Jewish support to Stein’s cocktail of politics, irreverence and rock and roll.

There was just one problem. Stein was not who he claimed. His real name can be revealed for the first time publicly – a close circle of confidants only found out the truth recently – as David Cole. And under that name he was once a reviled Holocaust revisionist who questioned the existence of Nazi gas chambers. He changed identities in January 1998.

Yuck-o. And bad for the cause of freedom too, because you know full well the media will try to tar us all with it. That’s how it works. Oliver Stone makes a documentary rationalizing a Soviet Union that slaughtered gazillions in the name of oppression; Sean Penn kisses the backsides of tyrants like Castro and Chavez — hey, no problem. They still work and win praise — and certainly no one tries to pin their foolishness on run-of-the-mill Hollywood Democrats, nor should they. But one creepoid on the right, and we’ll soon start to hear, “Well, that’s what they’re all like, deep down.” See if we don’t.

A leftist activist, blogger, and radio host at the University of Wyoming [corrected] has been accused by police of fabricating a rape threat against herself — the imaginary rapist was, of course, an evil conservative. Meg Lanker-Simons apparently posted a message on a Facebook page saying:  ”I want to hate f**k Meg Lanker-Simons so hard. That chick that runs her liberal mouth all the time and doesn’t care who knows it…  One night with me and she’s gonna be a good Republican bitch.” (This, of course, is not to be confused with the episode of Bill Maher’s Real Time in which leftist comedian Marc Maron and leftist whatever-the-hell-he-is Dan Savage actually discussed wanting to do such things to Congresswoman Michele Bachmann.)

I don’t want to take any cheap shots at Miss Lanker-Simons’ psychology — not in public anyway — but I did note with no little hilarity a Facebook page that was constructed to support her in her brave fight against her make-believe conservative rapist (who’s still on the loose, by the way). The page is apparently headlined: “Meg Lanker-Simons is innocent we believe what she did was justified and deserves not to be held accountable for her accusations we stand behind you sister.”

It’s that “we believe what she did was justified” that gave me the hearty dose of laughter I require to get through my day. What could justify spilling your imagination onto the internet in such a way that others might mistake your bizarre interior world for reality?