This was bound to happen eventually - if it hasn't already. Jewish man removed from airplane for praying.

The airplane was heading towards the runway at the Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport when eyewitnesses said the Orthodox man began to pray.

"He was clearly a Hasidic Jew," said Yves Faguy, a passenger seated nearby. "He had some sort of cover over his head. He was reading from a book.

"He wasn't exactly praying out loud but he was lurching back and forth," Faguy added.

The action didn't seem to bother anyone, Faguy said, but a flight attendant approached the man and told him his praying was making other passengers nervous.

I'm not Orthodox, but I am relatively active in my Conservative synagogue and usually take a prayer book with me on trips just in case the mood strikes me. A few years ago I was in first class (read - close to the cockpit), when I took out a few pages of Hevrew text from the Torah so that I could practice a reading that I would be doing that Sabbath at my synangogue. After a semi-innocuous, "what's that?" from the flight attendant, I figured it would be better for all involved just to put it away. I haven't even read English religious texts on the plane since, just in case, which is a shame because there's no better time to reflect on things when your sitting by yourself for several hours in an aluminum tube.

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Classic "The Onion as Real Life" from Opinion Journal:

"The first Muslim to be crowned Miss England has warned that stereotyping members of her community is leading some towards extremism," reports London's Daily Mail:

Hammasa Kohistani made history last year when she was chosen to represent England in the Miss World pageant. . . .

She said: "The attitude towards Muslims has got worse over the year. Also the Muslims' attitude to British people has got worse.

"Even moderate Muslims are turning to terrorism to prove themselves. They think they might as well support it because they are stereotyped anyway. It will take a long time for communities to start mixing in more. . . ."

So let's see if we follow this argument. According to Kohistani, Muslims are so thin-skinned and so violent that they respond to prejudice with terrorism.

Um, isn't that an invidious stereotype?

Maybe she got the idea from a 1997 Onion piece, datelined Hebron, West Bank:

In an emotionally charged press conference Monday, crazed Palestinian gunman Faisal al Hamad expressed frustration over the stereotyping of his people.

"As a crazed Palestinian gunman, I feel hurt by the negative portrayal of my people in the media," said al Hamad, 31, a Hebron-area terrorist maniac. "None of us should have to live with stereotyping and ignorance."

He then began screaming and firing into a busload of Israeli schoolchildren.

"It hurts that in this supposedly enlightened day and age, people still make assumptions about other people," al Hamad said. "We should not rely on simple generalizations. Each crazed Palestinian gunman is an individual."

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I remember when John Kerry was telling us during the 2004 presidential campaign about the fact that Bush would be the first President with a net loss of jobs during his presidency (which turned out not to happen, barely) which boded poorly for the future of job creation. Since then millions of jobs have been created amid two years of continued economic growth and a dropping unemployment rate.

Now, the Democrat's "New Direction for America" plan, featured at the top of Nancy Pelosi's website is concerned about "gas over $3 per gallon." It's in the $2.30s and falling in my area. Now where the hell is that website guy they hired? The Democrats are so confident that things can only get worse that if hurts their message. They should stay away from the numbers. If people really do feel that awful about the economy and their financial situation then they will vote for Democrats as Americans are famous for voting their wallet. It shouldn't be necessary to have to convince them how bad things are.

And the last time I checked, the President doesn't control gas prices. In theory, without the tax breaks to oil companies that Democrats also complain about, the price of gas would need to be even higher for the companies to earn the same profits.

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What a bitch! Phone Records Scandal at HP - To catch a leaker, Hewlett-Packard's chairwoman spied on the home phone records of its board of directors.

Come on, admit that it's the first thing that came into your mind when you read the article.