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No Spin Zone

Here I thought it was going to be a pretty boring day with the best news that President Bush once again is trying to gain that elusive Jewish vote by appointing Daniel Pipes to a government commission. I'll get to that in a minute, but first I have to apologize for not at least linking to an update about the Ten Commandments row in Alabama. Here's the link. It is safe to say that Roy Moore might be done in the Alabama judiciary. The folks in Alabama rarely seem to get it, but here's the fact I must explain. The Ten Commandments are not the basis of US Law. English Law and before that, fedual law has minimal links to the Ten Commandments or even the Code of Hammurabi. Of course, given the majority of religious persons in the US are either Jewish or Christian, it's fair to say the Decalouge is the basis of our morality. But as anyone will tell you the First Commandemnt (you shall have no other God but me) and the First Amendment (Congress shall make no law) are hardly complimentary ideas.

But the funnier story has to be Fox News Channel's unfortunate surprise at the federal courthouse in Lower Manhattan. If the lawyers had to pay for a cab ride, Rupert ought to reimburse them because the story on this is too unbelievable. Basically, Al Franken has gotten under Bill O'Reilly's skin several times (last of which was at the LA Times Festival of Books) for being anything but "Fair and Balanced." Unhappy that Fox was attempting to get many Republican pundits to make outrageous claims of unbias, Franken wrote his most recent work "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right" to slam the Ann Coulter crowd of attack dogs. Fox, who owns a trademark on the phrase "Fair and Balanced", attempted to get an injunction on the title, Penguin the publisher released the book early to avoid having to draft a new cover. It turns out to not matter very much.

That's right, when the judge says this is an "easy case" to decide that code to the highly paid lawyers that basically you shouldn't have even brought this motion.


Now on to the whole thing with Daniel Pipes. In case you don't know, Pipes is the fellow who started "Campus Watch" to report on the liberal bias inherent at US university and the implicit "anti-Zion" message being spewed forth. President Bush decided to add Pipes to the US Institute of Peace. This is a valentine to the Paul Wolfowitzs of the world to let them know that in Bush and Karl Rove's eyes, conservative Jews should come in the from cold and know that when people like Trent Lott call them "Christkillers" it's just out of habit. No seriously, Pipes' idea of unAmerican thought at univerisities is pretty ridiculous because nearly a quarter to as many as half of all American academics are Jews. Some of them, like Noam Chomsky, are going to lash out at the Israeli Government verbally. However, the majority of pro-Palestinean fever on campuses I have been to is largely because other underrepresented groups tend to equate the Israel-Palestine conflict as just another front of the developed world's war on the developing world. And sure, when you then take what some professors might say against the United States from time to time and equate that with this Third World partisanship it appears that the whole academic system has gone to rot and that every university student, facutly member, and employee is better dead than red.

What' even more depressing is that the Council of American-Islamic Relations is screaming at this recess appointment. The poor people at CAIR have been forced to act as the main TV presence for America's 2 million Muslims at a time when Roy Moore, Pipes, and Bill O'Reilly are purporting that all Muslims secretly want to be and are martyr's committing jihad for their faith. Of course, that's true, because "martyr" and "jihad" doesn't mean the same thing to Allah. Instead, Muslims believe they must not be swayed from their convictions and struggle to achieve them. That's right folks, "jihad" means "struggle" in Arabic, not "blowing yourself up on a bus". When you consider the religious zeal of fringe Jewish and Christian groups, if you don't get a little worried about mixed messages, you ought to realize that ol John Ashcroft is a Pentacostalist.

posted by Thomas at 4:45 PM 0 comments