Answer the question at the end by quoting:

Michael Brant Shermer was born on September 8, 1954 in Los Angeles. An only child, he was raised in Southern California, primarily in the La Canada Flintridge area. His parents divorced when he was four and later remarried, his mother to a man with three children, who became Shermer's step-sister and two step-brothers, and his father to a woman with whom he had two daughters, Shermer's half-sisters. His father died of a heart attack in 1986, and his mother of brain cancer in 2000.
Shermer's master's degree in experimental psychology at the California State University, Fullerton, led to many after-class discussions with professors Bayard Brattstrom and Meg White at a local pub--The 301 Club--that went late into the night. These discussions, along with his studies in cultural anthropology, led him to question his religious beliefs. He abandoned his devout religious views, fueled by what he perceived to be the intolerance generated by the absolute morality he was taught in his religious studies; the hypocrisy in what many believers preached and what they practiced; and his growing awareness of other religious beliefs, and how they were determined by the temporal, geographic, and cultural circumstances in which their adherents were born. From this, Shermer came to conclude it is "obvious that God was made in our likeness and not the reverse." By midway through his graduate training, he removed the Christian silver ichthys medallion that he had been wearing around his neck for years. He completed his MA degree from the California State University in psychology in 1978.  The final step in Shermer's abandoning religion came when his college sweetheart, Maureen, was in an automobile accident that broke her back and rendered her paralyzed from the waist down. Shermer relates:  When I saw her at the Long Beach Medical Center ER, the full implications of what this meant for her begin to dawn on me. There, in the ER, day after dreary day, night after sleepless night, I took a knee and bowed my head and asked God to heal Maureen's broken back. I prayed with deepest sincerity. I cried out to God to overlook my doubts in the name of Maureen. I willingly suspended all disbelief. At that time and in that place, I was once again a believer. I believed because I wanted to believe that if there was any justice in the universe -- any at all -- this sweet, loving, smart, responsible, devoted, caring spirit did not deserve to be in a shattered body. A just and loving God who had the power to heal, would surely heal Maureen. He didn't. He didn't, I now believe, not because "God works in mysterious ways" or "He has a special plan for Maureen" -- the nauseatingly banal comforts believers sometimes offer in such trying and ultimately futile times -- but because there is no God.

What changes in beliefs did Michael have?

He abandoned his devout religious views,



Answer the question at the end by quoting:

According to most sources, Omar was born sometime between 1950 and 1962 in a village in Kandahar Province, Kingdom of Afghanistan (in present-day Kandahar Province or Uruzgan Province). Some suggest his birth year as 1950 or 1953, or as late as around 1966. According to a "surprise biography" published by the Taliban in April 2015, he was born in 1960. His exact place of birth is also uncertain; one possibility is a village called Nodeh near the city of Kandahar.
On 4 April 1996, supporters of Mullah Omar bestowed on him the title Amir al-Mu'minin ('myr lmw'mnyn, "Commander of the Faithful"), after he donned a cloak alleged to be that of Muhammad that was locked in a series of chests, held inside the Shrine of the Cloak in the city of Kandahar. Legend decreed that whoever could retrieve the cloak from the chest would be the great Leader of the Muslims, or "Amir al-Mu'minin".  In September 1996, Kabul fell to Mullah Omar and his followers. The civil war continued in the northeast corner of the country, near Tajikistan. The nation was named the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan in October 1997 and was recognized by Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Described as a "reclusive, pious and frugal" leader, Omar very seldom left his residence in the city of Kandahar, and visited Kabul only twice between 1996 and 2001 during his tenure as ruler of Afghanistan. In November 2001, during a radio interview with the BBC, Omar stated: "All Taliban are moderate. There are two things: extremism ['ifraat', or doing something to excess] and conservatism ['tafreet', or doing something insufficiently]. So in that sense, we are all moderates - taking the middle path."  According to Pakistani journalist Rahimullah Yusufzai, Mullah Omar stated in the late 1990s, "We have told Osama [Bin Laden] not to use Afghan soil to carry out political activities as it creates unnecessary confusion about Taliban objectives."  In 1998, despite receiving a personal invitation from Saudi Arabia's ruler, King Fahd, Omar refused to make a pilgrimage to Mecca and wouldn't do one in his lifetime.  Mullah Omar was also "Head of the Supreme Council of Afghanistan".

Who is the leader of the Islamic Emirate?

"Amir al-Mu'minin".



Answer the question at the end by quoting:

The son of a physician, Kunstler was born in New York City and attended DeWitt Clinton High School. He was educated at Yale College, graduating Phi Beta Kappa in 1941, and Columbia University Law School from which he graduated in 1948. While in school, Kunstler was an avid poet and represented Yale in the Glascock Prize competition at Mount Holyoke College. Kunstler served in the U.S. Army during World War II in the Pacific theater, attaining the rank of Major, and received the Bronze Star.
In 1974-1975, Kunstler defended a prisoner charged with killing a guard during the Attica Prison riot. Under cross-examination, Kunstler forced Correction Officer Donald Melven to retract his sworn identification of John Hill, Kunstler's client, and Charles Pernasilice (defended by Richard Miller), admitting he still retained "slight" doubts that he confessed to investigators at the time of the incident. Kunstler focused on pointing out that all the other prosecution witnesses were testifying under reduced-sentencing agreements and called five prison inmates as defense witnesses (Miller called none), who testified that other prisoners hit the guard.  Despite Justice King's repeated warnings to Kunstler to "be careful, sir", Kunstler quickly became "the star of the trial, the man the jurors watch most attentively, and the lawyer whose voice carries most forcefully". Although the prosecution was careful to avoid personal confrontation with Kunstler, who frequently charmed the jury with jokes, on one occasion Kunstler provoked a shouting match with the lead prosecutor, allegedly to wake up a sleeping jury member. The jury convicted Hill of murder and Pernasilice of attempted assault. When Kunstler protested that the defendants would risk being murdered due to the judges remanding them, King threatened to send Kunstler with them. New York Governor Hugh Carey granted executive clemency to Hill and the other inmates in 1976, even though Hill's name was not on the recommended list of pardons delivered to the governor and his appeals were still pending.  In June, Kunstler and Barbara Handshu, representing another inmate at Attica, Mariano Gonzales, asked for a new hearing on the role of FBI informant Mary Jo Cook.

What was he sentenced to Attica for?
a prisoner charged with killing a guard during the