Considerettes

Some Representatives who voted for the "AIG tax" privately expressed regret after the emotional vote.  It doesn’t look like it’s actually going to pass now.  Looks like we might have dodged that bullet.

Or not.

But now, in a little-noticed move, the House Financial Services Committee, led by chairman Barney Frank, has approved a measure that would, in some key ways, go beyond the most draconian features of the original AIG bill. The new legislation, the "Pay for Performance Act of 2009," would impose government controls on the pay of all employees — not just top executives — of companies that have received a capital investment from the U.S. government. It would, like the tax measure, be retroactive, changing the terms of compensation agreements already in place. And it would give Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner extraordinary power to determine the pay of thousands of employees of American companies.

(Emphasis mine.)  The bill passed in the Financial Services Committee on a nearly-party-line vote.  I’ll let you guess which party was for it and which against. 

The government is doing what government does best; increase its power.  When there is that much money flowing around DC, it is bound to become the tool used to that end.  Tax cuts and smaller government would reduce that ability, if not that propensity.  Our founding father knew this very well, which is why we started out with a more decentralized form of republic.  Over time, the federal government has indeed become powerful enough to buy into the public sector and start running the show, deciding who can work for your company and, if this passes, for how much.

Remind me again how these very fears were, and are still, labeled "paranoia"?

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…when the President of the United States can do this:

The Obama administration asked Rick Wagoner, the chairman and CEO of General Motors, to step down and he agreed, a White House official said.

On Monday, President Barack Obama is to unveil his plans for the auto industry, including a response to a request for additional funds by GM and Chrysler. The plan is based on recommendations from the Presidential Task Force on the Auto Industry, headed by the Treasury Department.

The White House confirmed Wagoner was leaving at the government’s behest after The Associated Press reported his immediate departure, without giving a reason.

General Motors issued a vague statement Sunday night that did not officially confirm Wagoner’s departure.
"We are anticipating an announcement soon from the Administration regarding the restructuring of the U.S. auto industry. We continue to work closely with members of the Task Force and it would not be appropriate for us to speculate on the content of any announcement," the company said.

The surprise announcement about the classically iconic American corporation is perhaps the most vivid sign yet of the tectonic change in the relationship between business and government in this era of subsidies and bailouts.

Don’t want to call it "socialism"?  Fine, but don’t call it "capitalism", either. 

I will note that this descent into "whatever-it-is-ism" was entered in mutually.  GM begged for money, the government gave it to them, and then government started pulling the strings.  Both sides contributed to this, but just because it was consensual doesn’t mean it was the right thing to do. 

This is path taken by most anyone who takes money from the government, whether they be churches, schools, welfare recipients or major automakers.  When you surrender your self-sufficiency, you lose much more in the bargain than originally thought. 

Could companies be bailed out by the government without leaving capitalist, free market principles?  Possibly.  But is this move by the President in line with those principles?  Not really.  An underperforming CEO would be removed by any responsible leader…of the Soviet Union.  We should not be putting our President in the position of being able to do that, and he shouldn’t be accepting that position.

Don’t want to call it "socialism"?  Fine.  What do you want to call it?

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Reports the Washington Post:

In his prime-time news conference Tuesday, Obama pushed back against bipartisan criticism of his plan, which is included in his budget blueprint, by saying that "there’s very little evidence that this has a significant impact on charitable giving."

No, actually there is evidence.  (Hat tip: Betsy’s Page.)

But a report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities said total charitable contributions would decline by about 1.3 percent, while the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University calculated that overall giving would drop by 2.1 percent. The highest-income households would decrease their giving by 4.8 percent, or $3.87 billion, the latter group found.

"Charities and the public need to understand that in the current economic environment, which is creating difficulty for some nonprofits and their constituents already, this public policy change is likely to have an additional negative effect," said Patrick M. Rooney, the philanthropy center’s interim executive director.

When you penalize something, you get less of it.  It’s a truism that Democrats like Obama have yet to figure out, but churches and soup kitchens are well aware of it.

The classic example is taxing yachts to soak the rich.  During the first Bush administration, a tax on yachts over $100,000 was instituted to try to increase the already huge percentage of the federal treasury that came from the rich.  The result was that middle-class ship builders lost their jobs because the sales of yachts sank by 70%, significantly faster than the overall boat market.  So President Bush came to their rescue and rescinded the tax. 

Taxes are not behavior-neutral.  They will affect the actions of those who are affected by them.  Democrats only seem to understand this when they do things like raise taxes on gas to try to reduce consumption, but they conveniently forget it when they trumpet how much they’re trying to help the little guy.  Problem is, their actions often hurt the little guy in the end, and the rich just do without one more yacht in their marina. 

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Lila Rose has been doing a great service with the Mona Lisa Project, exposing Planned Parenthood as the abortion mill it is.  In video after video on their web site, they expose cases where PP clinics have a "hear no evil" approach to statutory rape. 

Ms. Rose and other pose as minors who say they’ve been made pregnant by their adult boyfriend, and their hidden camera videos show PP employees ignoring this law that is to protect these children.  But no investigation of this corrupt organization. 

Stop the ACLU notes that PP gets, in addition to their profits, $300 million of federal taxpayer dollars every year.  And yet, no national investigation of laws being broken in California, Arizona and Indiana.

Phone conversations included PP employees telling her how to cover up the rape, and how to give money for the abortion of just black babies.

Regardless of your political party or stand on Roe v Wade, this is simply outrageous.  Why this organization has not come under investigation, by any administration or Congress, is beyond me.

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Shire Network News #158 has been released. The feature interview is with former Muslim, Adil Zeshan talking about the recent incident in Luton in which returning soldiers were abused in the streets of Luton by Muslim protesters.  Click here for the show notes, links, and ways to listen to the show; directly from the web site, by downloading the mp3 file, or by subscribing with your podcatcher of choice.

Below is the text of my commentary. It’s a little longer than the actual segment, since I cut out the quote from Ron Silver’s article because of time constraints.

Hi, this is Doug Payton for Shire Network News, asking you to "Consider This!"

Ron Silver, actor and political activist, died last week of cancer at 62.  Ron was a TV, movie and theater actor in the U.S. From the late 70s sitcom "Rhoda" to playing Bruno Gianelli on "The West Wing", to movies like "Ali", "Silkwood", "Kissinger and Nixon" and "Timecop", Silver was certainly not one to be typecast.  But that resistance to being easily pigeon-holed extended to more than just his acting roles. 

The phrase that I said earlier, "actor and political activist", usually connotes a person who has devoted their life to unwavering support of liberal causes.  Indeed, Silver did found the liberal lobby group Creative Coalition with the likes of Susan Sarandon and Alec Baldwin.  He went on the stump for Bill Clinton.  He was in favor of abortion rights and gun control.  What do you call a guy like that?

In Hollywood, they call you a "libertarian" or a "neo-con".  No, really, that’s what he’s been called.  Why is that?

Well, there was a seminal event a bit over 7 years ago that caused Ron Silver to change the label he used for his political alignment.  You might have heard of it; it was in all the papers, and I mean all of them.  After that event, he called himself "a 9/11 Republican".  You know the type; we have several on staff here at SNN.  The events of that day caused him to re-evaluate some of his views, and in an article he wrote in December of 2007, he explained why he took the terrorists seriously.

International Affairs 101 looks at intentions and capabilities. If my five-year-old son declares the United States his enemy and he intends to destroy it, call me crazy but I take it with a grain of salt. (Although I will monitor more closely what he’s watching on TV and check the parental controls on the computer.) If a group of people have the same intention as my son but they may represent the feelings of hundreds of thousands or more likely millions upon millions of people I take the threat more seriously. And when these folks have successfully attacked our military, our diplomats, and our cities and civilian population, well yeah, I take them at their word. Perhaps I didn’t when they officially declared war on us more than 10 years ago, but they’ve certainly got my attention now.

Silver didn’t think his fellow Democrats took this threat seriously, so he switched to the GOP.  He came out in support of President George W. Bush in this regard.  He narrated the film "Fahrenhype 9/11", the rebuttal to Michael Moore’s "Fahrenheit 9/11".  He spoke at the 2004 Republican National Convention.  And continuing in his rethinking of liberal dogma he had unquestioningly believed, he produced a film questioning whether the United Nations was actually fulfilling it’s ideals.

While filming episodes of "The West Wing", this change of heart, on these few issues, got him greeted on the set with chants of "Ron, Ron, the neo-con", which, while he acknowledged it was said in fun, still "had an edge".  Alec Baldwin, commenting on this change while writing about Silver’s passing, labeled him a "libertarian".  Never mind all the other issues with which he lined up with them; he failed the orthodoxy test and thus had a scarlet "GOP" sewed to his garments.

By the way, there was another member of "The West Wing" cast that agree with Ron’s position.  However, Ron said, "he was smarter than me. He donated to the Democrats and made sure his vote for Bush stayed quiet.”  Y’know, somewhere, Senator Joe McCarthy is lying in his grave watching the Irony Meter go off the scale.

So let the passing of Ron Silver give us some lessons.  The Hollywood liberal elite is lockstep liberal and very elite.  Stick a pinky toe off the line and prepare to be marginalized, even after you’re dead.  And remember this when these folks talk about their support for the First Amendment.  "I’ll defend your right to say it (but then it’s open season, baby)."  When they sit in front of Congress trying to push their pet project of the month, remember Ron Silver, and consider this.

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…for stretched definitions of "temporary".

President Barack Obama’s budget would generate deficits averaging almost $1 trillion a year over the next decade, according to the latest congressional estimates, significantly worse than predicted by the White House just last month.

The Congressional Budget Office figures, obtained by The Associated Press Friday, predict Obama’s budget will produce $9.3 trillion worth of red ink over 2010-2019. That’s $2.3 trillion worse than the White House predicted in its budget.

Worst of all, CBO says the deficit under Obama’s policies would never go below 4 percent of the size of the economy, figures that economists agree are unsustainable. By the end of the decade, the deficit would exceed 5 percent of gross domestic product, a dangerously high level.

Yeah, this is all just until we get back on our feet again.  Just something to tide us over, while we ride out the recession.

Or while we deepen it.

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Henry Neufeld and Timothy Sandefur (here and here) have both blogged about the NC divorce case that I highlighted yesterday.  Both point to a PDF of the judges ruling in the case, and note that there is more to the ruling on schooling.

Mrs. Mills has joined the Sound Doctrine church, a church that many who have “escaped” from it (that’s the term they, in fact, use) say has anything but sound doctrine.  After reading excerpts of the affidavits in the ruling, I would have to agree.

The concerns that Mr. Mills had to homeschooling included misconceptions that those don’t homeschool typically have about the practice; that it did not expose the Mills children to “the real world” and didn’t give them a “firm foundation for their future social relationships”.  Some of their extra-curricular activities are listed, and it sounds like they could easily find socialization in those.  He also said that it was his understanding was the the homeschooling was temporary.

At the end of the section about schooling, he does mention that some of this included religious training from this Sound Doctrine church, which he was concerned about.  Fair enough, but here is where we find ourselves at a decision that could, contrary to Mr. Neufeld’s and Mr. Sandefur’s thoughts, have widening influence.  The judge finds that it would be in the best interest of the children to pull them out of a schooling situation where, the judge agrees, the children have “thrived academically”.  There can be only two reasons for this based on what’s in the ruling; either it’s the “only temporary” issue or it’s the religious issue.

If it’s because the understanding was that homeschooling was to be only temporary, then perhaps some other education needs to be done to make sure that this isn’t being nixed by the husband because of misconceptions about homeschooling.  The whole “real world socialization” idea has been thoroughly debunked.  And on page 7, point #5, the judge “clearly recognizes the benefits of home school”.  So this appears not to be the main reason.

Which brings us to the religious issue.  After conceding the benefits of homeschooling, the judge, in the same point, then agrees to Mr. Mills’ request to “re-enroll the children back into the public school system and expose them and challenge them to more than just Venessa Mills’ viewpoint.”  This is where it gets dicey.

Others cited in the ruling consider the Sound Doctrine church to be a “cult”, and I’m not in a position to disagree with them.  The behavior of Mrs. Mills tends to back up their assertions.  However, if this ruling is made specifically to expose the children to other viewpoints, than any homeschooler of any religion or philosophy could have their choice annulled by a court for that reason, cult or not.  (I imagine, indeed, a judge that took children out of an atheist homeschooling situation to “challenge” that viewpoint would find all sorts of “friend of the court” briefs from the ACLU.)  The mother could lose custody of the children based on her religious beliefs and how those beliefs translate into abuse, but, while even that is a difficult thing for a court to decide, that is not, as I read it, the reason that the children are being sent to public school.

There’s that poem that has lines “First they came for ___, and I did not speak up because I wasn’t a ___.”  It’s been used and misused over the years, but I think it applies here.  I don’t think we can see this ruling and not feel some concern over perhaps government coming for Christians or Jews, or whatever other religion that a judge thinks needs to be “challenged”, on the say-so of an aggrieved spouse.  Whether the grievance is valid or not, or whether the religion is a cult or not, it should be cause for concern.

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Last week, a judge in North Carolina was ruling in a divorce case.  The husband was an admitted adulterer.  His wife was going to get custody of the kids. 

However, the husband decided he didn’t want to pay for the expenses of continuing to homeschooling the children, so his lawyer drew up a request, and the judge granted it.

Even with abundant evidence showing the Mills children are well adjusted and well educated, Judge [Ned W.] Mangum ruled overwhelmingly against Mrs. [Venessa] Mills on every point. He stated the children would do better in public school despite the fact that they are currently at or beyond their grade level.  Evidence showed two children tested several grades ahead.

When issuing his verdict Judge Mangum stated his decision was not ideologically or religiously motivated. However, he told Mrs. Mills public school will "challenge the ideas you’ve taught them."

Typical big-government mentality.  Never mind results, you gotta’ get with the program.

More details here.

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From Chuch Asay (click for a larger version):

You get less of what you tax/punish. 

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The blog "Stop the ACLU" has a run-down of just the recent cases of countries doing things in a manner that doesn’t exactly say they like us again.  Cuba and Venezuela opening up their airfields to Russian bombers.  Ecuador (Ecuador!) expelling US diplomats for the second time this month.  Iran continues its nuclear ambitions (and blames economic isolation for their pushback).  North Korea threatens to test a ballistic that some believe could hit the US west coast. 

Hillary Clinton did, however, use the strongest possible terms to denounce that missile test, saying that such a launch would be "very unhelpful". 

Yeah, that’ll teach ‘em.

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Shire Network News #157 has been released. The feature interview is with Professor Barry Rubin of the The Global Research in International Affairs  Center in Israel, talking about the statement made by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his fellow 9/11 conspirators at Guantamo Bay taking credit for the atrocity, and why western politicians simply refuse to listen to the enemy when they announce their goals and motives clearly. Click here for the show notes, links, and ways to listen to the show; directly from the web site, by downloading the mp3 file, or by subscribing with your podcatcher of choice.

Below is the text of my commentary.

Hi, this is Doug Payton for Shire Network News asking you to "Consider This!"

The National Intelligence Council, according to its website, "is a center of strategic thinking within the US Government, reporting to the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) and providing the President and senior policymakers with analyses of foreign policy issues that have been reviewed and coordinated throughout the Intelligence Community."

Let me ask you something; what kind of person do you want to be the chairman of this group?  What kind of clear thinking do you want from the person who would lead these intelligence analysts?  Well, let’s find out what kind of person President Obama wants for this position.

How about a guy who spent so much time with the Saudis that, when we were trying to push Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait, he thought the Saudis were cash-strapped and wouldn’t help much.  (They weren’t, and they did.)  How about a guy who was worried about declaring that Hamas and Hezbollah were "terror groups" (that is to say, telling the truth) because that might make them mad at us and terrorize Americans at home or abroad?  (They haven’t.)

No?  Yeah, you’re right.  No one with that lack of diplomatic acumen and that inability to read a foreign government would ever work out in that job.  OK then, how about this?  How about a guy who thought that the Chinese government’s response to Tiananmen Square demonstrations (that is to say, the massacre) "stands as a monument to overly cautious behavior"?  Should we hire a guy with that level of understatement, that "contrarian inclination to challenge conventional wisdom of any sort", as James Fallows of The Atlantic might (hypothetically of course) put it?

Yeah, me neither.  Yet that’s what almost happened this past week.  Barack Obama nominated Chas Freeman to the NIC, the group that leads the effort to produce the National Intelligence Estimate, a report that Left and Right alike look to for support of their foreign policy decisions.  Mr. Freeman, indeed, fits all the previously enumerated anti-criteria, but the Obama administration wanted him to be in charge of our most forward-looking intelligence analysis.  Fortunately, last Tuesday, while I was actually writing up this segment originally, we dodged a bullet and, apparently over all the controversy surrounding this nomination, Mr. Freeman took his name out of consideration.

Can we make a difference, and keep nuts like this out of positions of power?  Yes we can!

But the reaction to his un-nomination is, I think, telling.  Here’s a guy who former Secretary of State James Baker thought was a Saudi apologist (and Baker himself is certainly no pro-Israel activist).  Here’s a guy too timid around terrorists, yet a supporter of Chinese tanks over student protestors.  Here’s a guy who wanted a national ID system to combat terror.  (Great idea; ask the innocent "Your papers, please" in order to combat the guilty.) 

Yet after all this, Freeman’s  and the Left’s knee-jerk reaction is to blame the Israel lobby.  All they have is a hammer, and so every setback looks like a nail.  Well, they got pounded, or nailed, or whatever you want to call it, but the fact that the Left reflexively supported this guy, and reflexively blamed the usual suspects when they lost him, doesn’t really…um…reflect well on them. 

A contrarian is one thing.  An apologist is another.  They need to take just a bit more time to consider this.

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Gilda Radner’s character from old Saturday Night Live shows, Emily Litella, was a hard-of-hearing commentator on the show’s Weekend Update segment.  She would, for example, go on and on with her outrage that the Supreme Court was considering a "deaf" penalty case, or with her support of "Youth in Asia".  When Chevy Chase nudged her and let her know that it was instead a "death" penalty case or "euthanasia", realizing she’d misheard the subject, she meekly turned back to the camera and gave her trademark line, "Never mind."

Apparently, Miss Litella went on to become our first woman President.

Confronting misgivings, even in his own party, President Barack Obama mounted a stout defense of his blueprint to overhaul the economy Thursday, declaring the national crisis is "not as bad as we think" and his plans will speed recovery.

Challenged to provide encouragement as the nation’s "confidence builder in chief," Obama said Americans shouldn’t be whipsawed by bursts of either bad or good news and he was "highly optimistic" about the long term.

The president’s proposals for major health care, energy and education changes in the midst of economic hard times faced skepticism from both Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill, as senators questioned his budget outlook and the deficits it envisions in the middle of the next decade.

(Emphasis on the "Never mind" added.)  This is why many of us are skeptical of the hand of government trying to direct the economy.  We wind up with "cures", such as these massive spending debt packages, that could be worse than the disease.  Just ask a Democrat in the know.

Sen. Kent Conrad, the chairman of the Budget Committee called the track of future deficits "unsustainable" and singled out Obama’s proposal for adding $634 billion in health care spending over the next 10 years.

"Some of us have a real pause about the notion of putting substantially more money into the health care system when we’ve already got a bloated system," said Conrad, D-N.D.

"Unsustainable"?  I thought Obama was supposed to be the responsible, sustainable lifestyle kind of President. 

Now, frankly, I don’t know for sure if even this new analysis of the economy is correct, and there’s no doubt we’ve in the middle of a significant downturn right now.  The point is, rushing through a "fix", and especially a "fix" we’ll be decades paying for, should never, ever be done.  But cries from Washington Democrats, liberal bloggers and pundits that this had to be done now and be done big (with some still saying that it should be much bigger than it is) are irresponsible. 

The size of the "stimulus" is one thing.  The rush to do something, anything, is the worst kind of "government is the solution" thinking.

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By "they" I meant American Democrats.  Not the establishment; the rank and file.  And by "President", I meant George W. Bush.

In a poll (PDF file) conducted in August of 2006, one of the questions was this:

10.  Regardless of how you voted in the presidential election, would you say you want President Bush to succeed or not?

Hat tip: Patterico, who notes that we were in the thick of a war whose outcome was uncertain.  When Democrats try to take the moral or patriotic high ground regarding what one man, Rush Limbaugh, said, just remind them what a majority of all of them said just 2 1/2 years ago.

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President Obama, demonstrating another example of what my brother-in-law Jim called an "incomplete life ethic", rescinded Bush’s executive order, reversing the ban on most federal funding of embryonic stem cell research.  Bush’s restrictions were informed by his moral beliefs, but Obama will have none of that.

Aides to Obama told reporters in a phone conference Sunday that the new administration intends to be led by a “responsible practice of science and evidence instead of dogma.” Harold Varmus of the president’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology said, “We view what happened with stem cell research in the last administration as one manifestation of failure to think carefully about how federal support of science and the use of scientific advice occurs.”

He once said that determining when a baby gets human rights was "above my pay grade".  Apparently, deciding when to destroy them isn’t. 

This, then, is apparently the "rightful place" that he promised to restore science to.  It doesn’t sound like morals and ethics are part of the equation anymore. 

Ryan Anderson, writing in the Weekly Standard, brings this point home (as well as noting a "big lie" that Obama continues to perpetuate).

During the ceremony this morning, Obama announced that by signing this executive order "we will lift the ban on federal funding for promising embryonic stem cell research." Of course there never was a ban on federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research. President Bush was, in fact, the first president in history to fund embryonic stem cell research. The compromise Bush reached, however, put restrictions in place that prevented the further destruction of human embryos. It is these restrictions protecting human life that Obama has lifted.

Anderson notes that, while Obama did appeal to "moral values", he set up a straw man that he could easily knock down and brush aside, supposedly taking the issue off the table.  Anderson’s article covers this and a number of other objections that Obama’s decision simply ignores.  Read the whole thing.

The Washington Post headlined their article, "Obama Aims to Shield Science From Politics".  It not only touches on the signing of the EO, but notes how this value system will affect us going forward.  A memorandum was issued along with this signing.

The memorandum will ensure that "people who are appointed to federal positions in science have strong credentials and that the vetting process for evaluating scientific information doesn’t lead to any undermining of the scientific opinion," he said.

That is to say, Obama wishes to shield science from similar ethical concerns, or indeed any debate, during his administration.  Heck, his spokesmen injected politics into the debate by trash-talking "the last administration as one  manifestation of failure to think carefully."  One wonders how the WaPo headline writer actually came up with that summary of the story.

And finally, Scott Ott satirizes this whole situation, such that it can be, with this:

As he signs an executive order Monday lifting limits on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research, President Barack Obama said he intends to make the wealthiest Americans “bear their fair share of the burden.”

Following through on his inaugural promise “to restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology’s wonders to raise health care’s quality and lower its cost“, the president will order the National Institutes of Health to extract stem cells from embryos whose parents earn more than $250,000 per year, and to inject them into “the sick and crippled middle class.”

“Let me be perfectly clear,” Mr. Obama said, “if your family earns less than $250,000 per year, the federal government will not harvest one single stem cell from your embryos…not one single cell. In fact, for 95 percent of working families, my stem cell plan contains nothing but miraculous healing. That’s right, the cures are on the way.”

Again, read the whole thing, and get a good chuckle.

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Shire Network News #156 has been released. We’re back and better than ever at our new website SNNSite.com.  The feature interview is covers anti-Jewish violence and intimidation on Canadian university campuses. Click here for the show notes, links, and ways to listen to the show; directly from the web site, by downloading the mp3 file, or by subscribing with your podcatcher of choice.

Below is the text of my commentary.

Hi, this is Doug Payton for the "back and better than ever" Shire Network News asking you to "Consider This!"

Muzzammil Hassan founded the network "Bridges TV".  According to their web site’s Mission page, Bridges TV…

…aims to foster a greater understanding among many cultures and diverse populations.Through our high-quality, informative, 24×7 programming in English; we seek to become a unifying force that can help people understand our diverse world through education and entertainment.

Given Muzzammil’s background, many of the shows on the network, and other statements from the network, this was mainly an attempt to improve the image of Muslims in the United States.  Irony of ironies, then, when he was arrested on February 12th for admitting to beheading his wife.

Let me ask you something; how much coverage of this have you seen in the news?  As of this SNN episode, it’s been over 3 weeks since the arrest and it’s been "vewy, vewy qwiet" out there.  Mark Steyn noticed that, while the mainstream media love a good hypocrite — just ask Ted Haggard or, for those old enough to remember, Jimmy Swaggart — they’ve been incredibly reluctant to expose the hypocrisy of "Mr. Moderate Muslim".   

Now why would that be?  Well, could it be that this is just another case of domestic violence, and that it doesn’t rise to the level of national news coverage?  After all, people are beheaded all the time in lover’s spats, right?  Oh, wait, no they’re not.  In fact, among even such things as honor killings — primarily done by Muslims — beheading is a very unusual way to die.  The jury’s still out on whether or not this was an actual honor killing, but beheading has become an almost exclusively Islamic radical MO of choice. 

So the idea that this is just another run-of-the-mill domestic violence case (although, in fact, none of them really are) doesn’t exactly pass muster.  It’s not just that Mr. Hassan founded a TV network dedicated to removing the stigmas stereotypically assigned to Muslims, and then proceeded to demonstrate one of those very stereotypes, but also that he basically signed it, "Love, Radical Islam" in bright, red letters when he used that calling card.

But the media?  The media leaves us with nothing but dry recitations of facts, and op-eds from other moderate Muslims who, while outraged at this "domestic violence", ignore the method of the madness.  Even non-Muslim feminists, who are rightly decrying the violence, don’t want to consider that angle, or in some cases excuse it.  Some think we just need to be understanding and raise awareness of other cultures. 

I think some awareness-raising needs to be done, too.  It’s just that the media don’t seem up to the task.  Ya’ think perhaps if Ted Haggard had beheaded someone that the ripples in the news pond would have been this small?  We know more about who Haggard and Swaggart had affairs with than we know about Hassan himself.  If you’ve not heard much, if anything, about this story, consider this.

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