You're free to dispute the views of those rabbis that Jewish doctrine justifies violence against civilians. There are Islamic scholars and imams who contest the view that the Koran does. There is debate in all religions about what their religion permits.

But you want to insist that Judaism is peaceful and Islam violent because you're basically saying nothing other than: "My religion is better than theirs."

So many of these comments come down to nothing more noble or interesting than that (or some variation: "my country is better than theirs, my culture is better than theirs, etc. etc).

Not only his comments, but also any that reply to him, are being deleted.

If anyone realized how many comments he leaves here every day even knowing they will all be quickly deleted -- how he stays all day long at this blog, every day, posting one comment after that next that last for 2 minutes - it would shock you. Seriously think about it: the level of mental illness required to want to spend your time every day engaged in such a futile activity is truly amazing, so please refrain from acknowledging it if you do see one before it's deleted.

Only unlike Hasan, bin Laden and others - who plainly justify their murderous acts based upon a literal reading of the Qur'an and the Hadith - Teitel cannot justify his acts by a literal reading of the Jewish Bible or the Torah.

There are rabbis who disagree with you. See the update.

You lack stats - probably because you know they'd refute your basic premise.

When counting everything up, should we include the various wars and bombing campaigns by the U.S. and Israel in Muslim countries, or should we just go ahead and ignore those?

Few people are as fortunate as you to have friendly connections to the largest and most respected blogs on the internet. Getting advice is so simple it cries out the question why not before?

I think it's very hard to find another blog with comparable readership size and comment traffic that consistently maintains high quality comment discussions. I've always thought the comment section here was one of the best, if not the best, for blogs of similar sizes (obviously, quality control is easier for smaller blogs).

I still think there are excellent commenters here who help a lot -- and sometimes quite good and substantive discussions - but it has degraded of late. I doubt anyone would deny that.

Ultimately it's up to you to draw the line in the sand, and one of the most important questions you should be interested in asking, is who elevates the conversation here, and who decimates it? Seriously, and with a straight face, why would you entertain the continual degradation of your work and efforts with daily outbursts of the most mediocre, unreflective, blowzy, run-down, and loathsome remarks a flaccid mind can generate?

There are really only two basic options: (1) let everything flow freely, which is what I used to do or (2) delete the crap and garbage, which I've been doing much more of.

The problem with (2) is that it is extremely time-consuming -- and using people to help presents its own problems -- plus, the more you do it the less free-flowing the discussions here are, and some people who contribute crappy comments at times are, in general, positive contributors (for instance, virtually all of the people involved in the current repetitive round of personal attacks and recriminations are all capable of contributing interesting comments).

I've been deleting far, far more than normal over the past month or so, but it seems the deletions can't keep pace with the garbage.

There used to a fair number of grownup men who frequented these threads, just a few years ago, but now there are very few of them left, and quite a few of the women have left, too-- not that there ever were very many women, or people of color, for that matter-- for other climes, where the adolescent boys are not allowed to run amok. These threads have become a bit like the current GOP, just much younger and even whiter and more male.

How do you think you know the race of the commenters here? And, for that matter -- other than the ones who use gender-distinct -- how do you know their gender?

A couple months ago, I found two puppies on the street with this homeless person - they were each six weeks - and I devoted all my persuasive efforts into securing consent to take one, and the wise reply I received was: "We can't take one - it's either none or both" - which was exactly the response I was hoping to hear.

So yeah - it's now up to 6, which is, if I recall correctly, 1 behind you. We vowed we won't take any more, but we made the same vow after the second, third and fourth, too.

God damn it. It's the same fucking pissing contest every goddamn day around here. Surely there's a blog site out there that can host the daily Ondelette-Sinnard-rrhead-LL-et.al. circle jerk.

It does get very repetitive and unproductive - not sure what to do about it, and sometimes I even help fuel it by participating. It's the same arguments every day which aren't very enlightening - more about venting personal dislike than anything.

This has happened before and I've asked people who find themselves arguing with the same small group of people here day after day, about the same issues, and posting a large percentage of the posts here, to voluntarily refrain from doing so. I guess it's time to make that request again.

It's not driven by bad motives - just people who are passionate about their views and can't let any opportunity go to argue with people they dislike. It's just that it doesn't really contribute much here and ends up detracting.