Horrible people

3 stories, all found in one day,

First the merely classless
Osbourne Says She Evened Score With Maiden -

Sharon Osbourne says she cut Iron Maiden's power during a concert on this summer's Ozzfest tour. The wife of rock icon Ozzy Osbourne has accused the heavy metal group's singer Bruce Dickinson of badmouthing her husband on stage.

"Dickinson got what he deserved," Osbourne wrote in a letter to the group's manager. "Was Dickinson so naive to think that I was going to let him get away with talking ... about my family night after night?"

During the same show in Devore earlier this month, Iron Maiden's members were pelted with eggs and debris from the crowd.

Not that I care that much about Iron Maiden these days, but that was just ridiculous. It's an insult to any notion of professionalism.

To the horrible and sordid

Word that Sgt. Dan Kennings had been killed in Iraq crushed spirits in the Daily Egyptian newsroom. The stocky, buzz-cut soldier befriended by students at the university newspaper was dead, and the sergeant's little girl--a precocious, blond-haired child they'd grown to love--was now an orphan.

They all knew that Kodee Kennings' mother had died when Kodee was about 5. The little girl's fears and frustrations about her father being in harm's way had played out on the pages of the Daily Egyptian for nearly two years, in gut-wrenching letters fraught with misspellings, innocent observations and questions about why Daddy wasn't there to chase the monsters from under her bed.

It turns out Daddy didn't exist. And neither did Kodee.

The Tribune went to southern Illinois to learn about the bond between Kodee and Dan Kennings, and the life Kodee would face without her hero.

Instead, eight days of reporting revealed elaborate fabrications and intricate lies. There is no soldier named Dan Kennings. The charming girl people came to know as Kodee Kennings is someone else entirely, a child from an out-of-state family led to believe that she was playing a part in a documentary about a soldier.

I recommend reading the whole article (fairly short).

To the truly despicable

Funeral protests merciless

Small, pitiful groups of perverse traitors cloaked in a warped, hate-filled and degraded version of Christianity are tirelessly traveling across America, cruelly protesting at the funerals of American soldiers killed in Iraq.

They are scheduled to stop in Middle Tennessee today, in Smyrna and Ashland City, to dishonor the solemn services and add to the horror and grief of those who mourn Staff Sgt. Asbury F. Hawn of Lebanon and Spc. Gary Reese Jr. of Ashland City. The Army National Guardsmen served together in the 278th Regimental Combat Team and died in an enemy attack Aug. 13 in Iraq.

Members of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kan., will be there, not to spread the comforting Gospel of Jesus Christ, but to spew a disgustingly vulgar and crude message of gay hatred while celebrating the death of U.S. soldiers.

This evil little congregation, led by Fred Phelps, gained infamy for showing up at the funerals of homosexuals to taunt family and friends and to promote their own unique brand of hatred. This summer they started picketing the funerals of soldiers killed in battle with placards that say, "We hate gays" and "Thank God for dead soldiers."

I did some research, and its' a Kansan named Fred Phelps and his cult, oddly called Westboro Baptist Church. It's a very strange group, even for cults. Most of the members (around 100 or so) are related to Phelps by either blood or marriage, and a disproportionate number of them are lawyers. One of the main reasons they do this sordid display is to incite violence against themselves and later lawsuits against official entities who "let" it happen.

Wife beating and child abuse are seemingly specific tenets of the faith and there is some weird alignment with the Nazi Christian Identity groups as well. It's hard to imagine a more loathsome group of people.

Original links via Instapundit