The Amish Prepare to Bury Their Children

The peaceful, bucolic Pennsylvania countryside was shattered by the shooting of 10 Amish girls in a one room schoolhouse. Five of those girls have died, and others are still at risk. In a community which prides itself on peaceful living and love of community, it's hard to imagine a more cruel crime.

However, in this wacky world we live in, there's always somebody who'd like to add terrible insult to grievous injury, and such was nearly the case with the upcoming funerals:

The Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kan., planned to boycott funerals for the victims Thursday and Friday but later canceled the protests in exchange for media airtime. The church claims on its Web site that the shooting spree was carried out by a "mad man" in retribution for Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell's "blasphemous sins against WBC." The site says Rendell "slandered and mocked and ridiculed and condemned Westboro Baptist Church on national Fox TV" and that he "revealed a conspiracy to employ the State's police powers to destroy WBC in order to silence WBC's Gospel message."

Both Amish and non-Amish "English" residents of Lancaster County vowed to not let any protester get anywhere near the funeral services.

This is the same group that marches outside the funerals of gays with "God Hates Fags" signs, or protests dead soldiers with signs thanking God for the "punishments" inflicted by Him. They're a bunch of inbred nuts, pure and simple, and they're probably very, very lucky that they didn't show up in Pennsylvania to protest. As peaceful as the Amish are, I think there are plenty of their neighbors who would gladly have run the whole bunch over with a combine, and then backed up to make sure they didn't miss anyone.

I'm not sure who gave them airtime (I heard it might be the Mike Gallagher radio show), but if they think they'll pursuade people to their wacky cause by ranting on the air for an hour, they're more delusional than they appear.