From The Boston Globe:

Kids take back seat to gay agenda
By Jeff Jacoby, Globe Columnist

March 15, 2006

IN PSYCHOLOGY, ''projection" occurs when someone attributes to others his own unpleasant beliefs or motivations. It is projection, for instance, when a liar assumes that everyone he deals with is dishonest, or when a man tempted by adultery accuses his spouse of planning to deceive him. Projection occurs in the public arena as well, as when supporters of racial preferences label ''racist" those who believe the law should be strictly colorblind.

A fresh example of projection arrived the other day by way of a news release from the Human Rights Campaign, one of the nation's largest gay and lesbian political organizations.

On March 10, Catholic Charities of Boston had announced that it was being forced to shut down its highly regarded adoption services, since it could not in good conscience comply with the government's demand that it place children for adoption with homosexual couples. Caught between the rock of Catholic teaching, which regards such adoptions as ''gravely immoral," and Massachusetts regulations, which bar adoption agencies from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation, the Boston Archdiocese had hoped to obtain a waiver on religious-freedom grounds. But when legislative leaders refused to consider the request, the archdiocese was left with no option but to end a ministry it had been performing for a century.

Whereupon the Human Rights Campaign issued its news release. It was headlined ''Boston Catholic Charities Puts Ugly Political Agenda Before Child Welfare," and a more perfect illustration of psychological projection would be hard to imagine.

For the political agenda driving this affair is the one favored by the Human Rights Campaign and its many allies in the media and state government: the normalization of homosexual adoption. So important is that agenda to its supporters that they will allow nothing to stand in its way -- not even the well-being of children in dire need of safe and loving families. Catholic Charities excels at arranging adoptions for children in foster care, particularly those who are older or handicapped, or who bear the scars of abuse or addiction. Yet the Human Rights Campaign and its friends would rather see this invaluable work come to an end than allow Catholic Charities to decline gay adoptions.

Note well: Catholic Charities made no effort to block same-sex couples from adopting. It asked no one to endorse its belief that homosexual adoption is wrong. It wanted only to go on finding loving parents for troubled children, without having to place any of those children in homes it deemed unsuitable. Gay or lesbian couples seeking to adopt would have remained free to do so through any other agency. In at least one Massachusetts diocese, in fact, the standing Catholic Charities policy had been to refer same-sex couples to other adoption agencies.

The church's request for a conscience clause should have been unobjectionable, at least to anyone whose priority is rescuing kids from foster care. Those who spurned that request out of hand must believe that adoption is designed primarily for the benefit of adults, not children. The end of Catholic Charities' involvement in adoption may suit the Human Rights Campaign. But it can only hurt the interests of the damaged and vulnerable children for whom Catholic Charities has long been a source of hope.

Is this a sign of things to come? In the name of nondiscrimination, will more states force religious organizations to swallow their principles or go out of business? Same-sex adoption is becoming increasingly common, but it is still highly controversial. Millions of Americans would readily agree that gay and lesbian couples can make loving parents, yet insist nevertheless that kids are better off with loving parents of both sexes. That is neither a radical view nor an intolerant one, but if the kneecapping of Catholic Charities is any indication, it may soon be forbidden.

''As much as one may wish to live and let live," Harvard Law professor Mary Ann Glendon wrote in 2004, during the same-sex marriage debate in Massachusetts, ''the experience in other countries reveals that once these arrangements become law, there will be no live-and-let-live policy for those who differ. Gay-marriage proponents use the language of openness, tolerance, and diversity, yet one foreseeable effect of their success will be to usher in an era of intolerance and discrimination . . . Every person and every religion that disagrees will be labeled as bigoted and openly discriminated against. The ax will fall most heavily on religious persons and groups that don't go along. Religious institutions will be hit with lawsuits if they refuse to compromise their principles."

The ax fell on Catholic Charities just two years after those words were written. Where will it have fallen two years hence?

Jeff Jacoby's e-mail address is jacoby@globe.com.

From The Boston Globe:

Kids take back seat to gay agenda
By Jeff Jacoby, Globe Columnist

March 15, 2006

IN PSYCHOLOGY, ''projection" occurs when someone attributes to others his own unpleasant beliefs or motivations. It is projection, for instance, when a liar assumes that everyone he deals with is dishonest, or when a man tempted by adultery accuses his spouse of planning to deceive him. Projection occurs in the public arena as well, as when supporters of racial preferences label ''racist" those who believe the law should be strictly colorblind.

A fresh example of projection arrived the other day by way of a news release from the Human Rights Campaign, one of the nation's largest gay and lesbian political organizations.

On March 10, Catholic Charities of Boston had announced that it was being forced to shut down its highly regarded adoption services, since it could not in good conscience comply with the government's demand that it place children for adoption with homosexual couples. Caught between the rock of Catholic teaching, which regards such adoptions as ''gravely immoral," and Massachusetts regulations, which bar adoption agencies from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation, the Boston Archdiocese had hoped to obtain a waiver on religious-freedom grounds. But when legislative leaders refused to consider the request, the archdiocese was left with no option but to end a ministry it had been performing for a century.

Whereupon the Human Rights Campaign issued its news release. It was headlined ''Boston Catholic Charities Puts Ugly Political Agenda Before Child Welfare," and a more perfect illustration of psychological projection would be hard to imagine.

For the political agenda driving this affair is the one favored by the Human Rights Campaign and its many allies in the media and state government: the normalization of homosexual adoption. So important is that agenda to its supporters that they will allow nothing to stand in its way -- not even the well-being of children in dire need of safe and loving families. Catholic Charities excels at arranging adoptions for children in foster care, particularly those who are older or handicapped, or who bear the scars of abuse or addiction. Yet the Human Rights Campaign and its friends would rather see this invaluable work come to an end than allow Catholic Charities to decline gay adoptions.

Note well: Catholic Charities made no effort to block same-sex couples from adopting. It asked no one to endorse its belief that homosexual adoption is wrong. It wanted only to go on finding loving parents for troubled children, without having to place any of those children in homes it deemed unsuitable. Gay or lesbian couples seeking to adopt would have remained free to do so through any other agency. In at least one Massachusetts diocese, in fact, the standing Catholic Charities policy had been to refer same-sex couples to other adoption agencies.

The church's request for a conscience clause should have been unobjectionable, at least to anyone whose priority is rescuing kids from foster care. Those who spurned that request out of hand must believe that adoption is designed primarily for the benefit of adults, not children. The end of Catholic Charities' involvement in adoption may suit the Human Rights Campaign. But it can only hurt the interests of the damaged and vulnerable children for whom Catholic Charities has long been a source of hope.

Is this a sign of things to come? In the name of nondiscrimination, will more states force religious organizations to swallow their principles or go out of business? Same-sex adoption is becoming increasingly common, but it is still highly controversial. Millions of Americans would readily agree that gay and lesbian couples can make loving parents, yet insist nevertheless that kids are better off with loving parents of both sexes. That is neither a radical view nor an intolerant one, but if the kneecapping of Catholic Charities is any indication, it may soon be forbidden.

''As much as one may wish to live and let live," Harvard Law professor Mary Ann Glendon wrote in 2004, during the same-sex marriage debate in Massachusetts, ''the experience in other countries reveals that once these arrangements become law, there will be no live-and-let-live policy for those who differ. Gay-marriage proponents use the language of openness, tolerance, and diversity, yet one foreseeable effect of their success will be to usher in an era of intolerance and discrimination . . . Every person and every religion that disagrees will be labeled as bigoted and openly discriminated against. The ax will fall most heavily on religious persons and groups that don't go along. Religious institutions will be hit with lawsuits if they refuse to compromise their principles."

The ax fell on Catholic Charities just two years after those words were written. Where will it have fallen two years hence?

Jeff Jacoby's e-mail address is jacoby@globe.com.

Welcome to My World, Claude Allen
By Ann Coulter

I guess the only way we'll ever find out how many blacks have worked in the Bush administration is to wait for them to get in trouble someday so we can read the breathless, triumphant stories on the front page of the New York Times about a black Republican scofflaw. It's amazing that anyone has ever heard of Condoleezza Rice -- she's never even been arrested for jaywalking.

Claude Allen, whom I first heard of this week, was a top adviser to President Bush for more than 4 1/2 years. Soon after Bush was elected in 2000, he made Allen the No. 2 official at the Department of Health and Human Services. Allen later became Bush's domestic policy adviser, meeting with the president several times a week.

In 2003, Bush nominated Allen to a federal judgeship on the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals -- which nomination was then blocked by the party that wouldn't exist without black votes. Deploying their usual strategy against black Republicans, Democrats raised questions about Allen's "legal credentials": Democrat-ese for "He's black, so he's probably not very smart." Allen went to Duke Law School, where he was remembered fondly by law professor Walter Dellinger, later Clinton's solicitor general.

During the entire time this talented, intelligent, magnificently conservative black man held high positions in the Bush administration, he was mentioned in only 11 articles in The New York Times. (A small part of Times Executive Editor Bill Keller dies every time the paper is forced to mention any black top officials in the Bush administration. It might remind people that the most highly placed black in the Clinton administration was his secretary, Betty Currie.)

But since Allen was accused of stealing from department stores a few weeks ago, the Times has mentioned him in seven articles -- including a major front page article on Monday, coverage more appropriate to the first moon landing. This makes Allen the first black alleged thief whose photo has ever appeared in the New York Times.

Allen isn't even working for the Bush administration anymore. Yet the Times is wallowing in his agony. I've never seen people enjoy another person's private pain so much -- at least not since a prosecutor started investigating Rush Limbaugh for taking too many back pain pills.

Let me be the first to say: Congratulations, Mr. Allen! The New York Times really hates you. Welcome to my world. We're so happy to have you in our club.

I'm not shocked by the information that Claude Allen is not without original sin. But it has to be said: He was pretty close.

Allen emerged from a tough neighborhood in Washington, D.C., to go to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and then Duke Law School. He joined a "mostly white and liberal" fraternity, according to the Times, where he was adored -- despite the fact that he didn't drink, a major demerit at a fraternity -- for his ability to get along with anyone. One fraternity brother told the Times that Allen was "always thoughtful and respectful of different opinions" -- a trait that would come in handy for a black teetotaler living in a UNC frat house.

He became a born-again Christian at college and -- the obvious next step -- a Republican after college. These acts are known in the liberal rulebook as "strike two" and "strike three," respectively. He explained leaving the party of his birth to become a Republican with eloquence: "I realized after the fact that I agree more with the Republican Party platform, that it talked about independence, that it talked about individual responsibility, individual rights, it talked about the ability to guarantee opportunities, not outcomes," adding, "that was very much what my family stood for."

He is married with four children, all of whom he home-schools. (Is there such a thing as strike four?) So he was already the moral equivalent to a Ku Klux Klanner in liberal eyes. Wait, no, if he were a former Klanner, he'd be the Democratic senator from West Virginia. Let me rephrase that: He was already a meat-eating, God-fearing, patriotic American in liberal eyes.

Allen also worked for the sainted Jesse Helms, former senator from North Carolina. By now, the average liberal would need yoga and a Barbra Streisand album to calm down. After Helms' 1984 Democratic opponent, James B. Hunt Jr., ran a TV commercial saying Helms was backed by "right-wing nuts," Allen reacted by saying that if the Helms campaign was run by similar guttersnipes, they could say Hunt was backed by "queers."

This week at the New York Times, it was revenge of the queers. I'm sorry it took a tough period in Allen's life for the New York Times to feature him under a banner headline on its front page, but all in all, I'm glad to finally know about Claude Allen. I'm proud to have this great fellow sinner in our party.

Panic in Davos World
By Patrick Buchanan

"Who is Karl Rove?" the puzzled fellow from Dubai inquired, on hearing he had a phone call waiting from the White House.

He found out. Karl was sorry to inform the sheiks that the 68-2 vote against the port deal in the House appropriations committee meant they would not be managing our East Coast terminals, and it would probably be wise to cut their losses and get out.

Thus the embarrassing episode ends in the best possible way for Dubai and Bush. But the firestorm was instructive for what it revealed.

Middle America did indeed react viscerally to news that -- after having been endlessly harangued by Washington that they will spend their lives in the shadow of Islamic terrorism -- Arabs from some place they've never heard of would be running our ports.

Their reaction was perfectly normal: "How dumb can these guys be?"

Bush's explanation never caught up with that first reaction. And when Hillary began pounding the ports deal as proof the Bush-Cheney team was clueless in a post-9/11 world, Republicans, seeing their No. 1 issue, national security, slipping away, dumped Bush. Bush, seeing his numbers plunging toward Cheneyville, told Rove: Tell Dubai goodbye.

But it is the media's contemptuous hostility toward people in whose name they presume to speak, suddenly on display, that was so instructive.

Here, again, is PBS-New York Times conservative David Brooks:

"This Dubai port deal has unleashed a kind of collective mania we haven't seen in decades ... a xenophobia tsunami ... a nativist, isolationist mass hysteria. ... God must love Hamas and Muqtada al-Sadr. He has given them the America First brigades of Capitol Hill."

Is there not some compassionate conservative who will send Brooks a grief counselor?

Here is his Times colleague Thomas Friedman on learning that folks thought the Dubai Ports deal was kind of a dumb thing to do.

This is "borderline racist. ... There's a poison loose. ... If we go Dark Ages, if we go down the road of pitchfork-wielding xenophobes, then the whole world will go Dark Ages."

Dark Ages? Are we really headed back to the fifth century A.D. if Halliburton aces out DPW for the New York terminal?

Fox News' Tony Snow, in a column titled, "Fearful Fringe Nativism is the Essence of Surrender," calls opponents of the deal "paranoid," caught up in a "Dubai hysteria."

"Fear has become the defining characteristic of a new strain of American nativism. ... Bin Laden ... has managed to plant the seeds of blank, unreasoning, hide-under-the-bed fear in many Americans."

To assure us he remains fearless, Snow ends: "Eternal vigilance remains a cost of liberty -- and Fearful Fringe nativism is what it has always been: the essence of surrender."

But as Snow's successor as editorial-page editor of The Washington Times, Tony Blankley, led the "Fearful Fringe" into battle against the Dubai deal, perhaps Snow should direct the cowardice charge there.

A disconsolate Weekly Standard has now weighed in. The collapse of the ports deal means "it's a paleo moment in America," wails Fred Barnes -- as in paleo-conservative. America is headed for a politics that is "gloomy, negative, defeatist, isolationist, nativist and protectionist."

In racing through the litany, Barnes only missed "xenophobic."

What are we to make of all this keening?

The media establishment was jolted as it realized that Middle America's belief in the Global Economy is wafer-thin. Its panic is proof of its lack of understanding of the country and of its fear that America may no longer be behind it, if ever it was.

For whatever the supporting role of the "paleos" in the ports battle, it cannot explain the instant opposition of almost 70 percent of the nation and 58 percent of Republicans and conservatives.

What happened to the ports deal is that Davos World collided with America First and got its clock cleaned. Economic patriotism, which engages the heart, thumped globalism, an intellectual construct of economists and corporatists.

Not to understand this is not to understand America. Though Bush may be an open-borders, free-trade Wilsonian who believes he has a providential mission to democratize the world, America, even when it was 90 percent with him, never bought in. To Middle America, Afghanistan and Iraq were always about punishing the people who did 9/11, not about converting them to Jeffersonian democracy.

What Barnes calls paleo-conservatism is the conservatism of the common man, rooted in tradition and wisdom born of experience. It is not the Big Government, open-borders, free-trade, interventionist, globaloney of the neo-cons and their Rebel in Chief.

Conservatives don't trash their countrymen, even if they think they're wrong. It is slander to say opposition to the Dubai deal exposed some deep, dark strain in the American soul.

The cakewalk crowd doesn't understand America because it doesn't live there. It lives in an ideological world of its own creation, which, as it denies aspects of reality, is forever colliding with reality.

And more collisions are coming.

Sudden Jihad Syndrome
By Daniel Pipes

FrontPageMagazine.com | March 14, 2006

“Individual Islamists may appear law-abiding and reasonable, but they are part of a totalitarian movement, and as such, all must be considered potential killers.” I wrote those words days after 9/11 and have been criticized for them ever since. But an incident on March 3 at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill suggests I did not go far enough.

That was when a just-graduated student named Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar, 22, and an Iranian immigrant, drove a sport utility vehicle into a crowded pedestrian zone. He struck nine people but, fortunately, none were severely injured.

Until his would-be murderous rampage, Taheri-azar, a philosophy and psychology major, had an apparently normal existence and promising future. In high school, he had been student council president and a member of the National Honor Society. A number of UNC students told the Los Angeles Times that he “was a serious student, shy but friendly.” One fellow student, Brian Copeland, “was impressed with his knowledge of classical Western thought, adding “He was kind and gentle, rather than aggressive and violent.” The university chancellor, James Moeser, called him a good student, if “totally a loner, introverted and into himself.”

In fact, no one who knew him said a bad word about him, which is important, for it signals that he is not some low-life, not homicidal, not psychotic, but a conscientious student and amiable person. Which raises the obvious question: why would a regular person try to kill a random assortment of students? Taheri-azar’s post-arrest remarks offer some clues.

* He told the 911 dispatcher that he wanted to “punish the government of the United States for their actions around the world.”
* He explained to a detective that “people all over the world are being killed in war and now it is the people in the United States[’] turn to be killed.”
* He said he acted to “avenge the deaths of Muslims around the world.”
* He portrayed his actions as “an eye for an eye.”
* A police affidavit notes that “Taheri-azar repeatedly said that the United States Government had been killing his people across the sea and that he decided to attack.”
* He told a judge, “I’m thankful you’re here to give me this trial and to learn more about the will of Allah.”

In brief, Taheri-azar represents the ultimate Islamist nightmare: a seemingly well-adjusted Muslim whose religion inspires him, out of the blue, to murder non-Muslims. Taheri-azar acknowledged planning his jihad for over two years, or during his university sojourn. It’s not hard to imagine how his ideas developed, given the coherence of Islamist ideology, its immense reach (including a Muslim Student Association at UNC), and its resonance among many Muslims.

Were Taheri-azar unique in his surreptitious adoption of radical Islam, one could ignore his case, but he fits into a widespread pattern of Muslims who lead quiet lives before turning to terrorism. Their number includes the 9/11 hijackers, the London transport bombers, and Maher Hawash, the Intel engineer arrested before he could join the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Mohammed Ali Alayed, the Saudi living in Houston fits, the pattern because he stabbed and murdered Ariel Sellouk, a Jewish man who was his one-time friend. So do some converts to Islam; who suspected Muriel Degauque, a 38-year-old Belgian woman, would turn up in Iraq as a suicide bomber throwing herself against an American military base?

This is what I have dubbed the Sudden Jihad Syndrome, whereby normal-appearing Muslims abruptly become violent. It has the awful but legitimate consequence of casting suspicion on all Muslims. Who knows whence the next jihadi? How can one be confident a law-abiding Muslim will not suddenly erupt in a homicidal rage? Yes, of course, their numbers are very small, but they are disproportionately much higher than among non-Muslims.

This syndrome helps explain the fear of Islam and mistrust of Muslims that polls have shown on the rise since 9/11.

The Muslim response of denouncing these views as bias, as the “new anti-Semitism,” or “Islamophobia” is as baseless as accusing anti-Nazis of “Germanophobia” or anti-Communists of “Russophobia.” Instead of presenting themselves as victims, Muslims should address this fear by developing a moderate, modern, and good-neighborly version of Islam that rejects radical Islam, jihad, and the subordination of “infidels.”

THE PRESIDENT'S RENOVATION STRATEGY
By Neal Boortz

Renovation strategy? That's one word you could use. Today George Bush begins a series of speeches trying to turn more public support for the war on terror in general and the war in Iraq in particular. It's an effort to rebuild his approval numbers. We've seen this before. The public becomes restless, and George Bush launches a series of speeches about the war in Iraq. Today Bush will talk about the global war on terror at George Washington University.

I'm still a supporter of the Iraqi war. I still believe that Saddam Hussein had to be removed from power. U.N Resolutions 687, 786 and 1441 clearly set forth the legal basis for the removal of Saddam Hussein, and no other country seemed willing to bear the responsibility. I firmly believe that had the United States backed off, Hussein would have seen it as a sign of weakness, and he would have quickly resurrected his weapons programs. In the long term, the United States would have suffered. In spite of the bleatings of the left and the failure of our mainstream media to report the facts objectively, there most definitely was a connection between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda, and that connection might well have blossomed into a full-scale collaboration had we not interceded. I know that there are many who disagree, but I don't feel that there are many out there who have put any real research into the matter who would express a differing viewpoint. [Just read "The Connection, How al Qaeda's Collaboration with Saddam Hussein has Endangered America" by Stephen F. Hayes. published by Harper Collins]

Do you approve or disapprove of the way George Bush is handling his second term in office?
approve
disapprove
OK ... here's the "but." Right now if some pollster asked me whether I approve or disapprove of the way George Bush is handling his second term in office, my only honest answer would be in the negative. At this point there are other things that I would like to see George Bush address; other things I would like for him to explain. A sampling:

* Why did he sign the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform act? He clearly stated that he thought the law was unconstitutional, but he signed it anyway. Now our right to political free speech is clearly under assault.

* Why has non-defense related government spending risen so fast during his Administration? Why did he set all-time records for government spending increases during the first three years of his presidency?

* Why has he been silent on the issue of school choice?

* Why did he team up with Ted Kennedy to double spending on the Department of Education, a Department Republicans had pledged to eliminate six years before he was elected. The spending hasn't helped. The quality of education has steadily decreased during the past six years.

* Forget the Arab aspects of the port deal, why would George Bush support turning over essential operations of six American ports to any foreign government, let alone an Arab one?

* Why hasn't he spoken out forcefully against the Kelo v. New London decision from the Supreme Court and the wholesale assault on the concept of private property rights that is ongoing in this country today?

* How could it possibly be that he hasn't found one single bill worthy of a presidential veto during the past five years? Is this an indication that over the past five years the Congress of the United States hasn't passed one single solitary piece of legislation that George Bush considered to be contrary to the principles of our Constitution, or excessive in any way?

* How in the wide, wide world of sports did he get talked into this obscene prescription drug program for wizened citizens? Didn't he realize that the average senior citizen spends about $600 a year on prescription drugs? That amounts to $1.64 a day. Every major pharmaceutical company out there has "lifeline" programs that insure that no American would go without a needed prescription drug. Yet he creates one of the biggest spending programs in our history; one that is destined to exceed all cost estimates. Why?

* What's the deal with tax reform? The president appoints a fancy panel to study our tax system, proposals for reform, and come up with a plan for a complete overhaul. What does the panel come up with? A virtual repeat of the 1986 tax reform act. Eliminate deductions and establish a few flat rates. The 1986 law has been amended over 9000 times since 1986. Now that's reform. The American people want some real reform. Where is the president?

* Why hasn't he spoken out more forcefully for real reform in medical care? Why hasn't he spoken out for more competition? How about a demand that congress give every private individual in this country the same tax breaks that businesses get when they buy health insurance policies?

* Why has he absolutely failed to do anything at all about the invasion of illegal immigrants flooding into our country across our border with Mexico? Why hasn't he called for a full federal investigation of charges that armed and uniformed Mexicans are firing on Border Patrol agents? Why hasn't he called for stricter penalties against employers who enable this flood of illegal immigration?

* Why hasn't he told Hillary Clinton to sit down and shut the hell up until she comes up with a reasonable explanation for those billing records?

* Why hasn't he told FEMA to set aside their asinine regulations and get every vehicle with a trailer hitch in Arkansas to hook up to one of those trailers and yank the damned things down to New Orleans to provide housing for police, firefighters and any American citizen who wants to work to rebuild that city?

* After the Cheney hunting incident, why didn't he go to the White House press room and say "OK, so you didn't get the story first. So it was broken by a small newspaper in Corpus Christi. You got scooped. Deal with it. Suck it up. You aren't the only studs with press cards. The American people are rather enjoying seeing you so put out over this. Why don't you run over to Capitol Hill and ask Ted Kennedy why he went to sleep while Mary Jo's body was still in the back seat of his car? Henry Whittington is alive. Mary Jo is still dead." Couldn't you just see his approval ratings soar after a presidential slap-down like that?

* Why hasn't he spoken out against the leftist inspired war against the individual? Ted Kennedy (there's that name again) spoke in favor of it? Who is championing for the individual out there?

OK --- that's just a start. Suffice it to say that George Bush needs to talk about much more than the global war on terror to float my boat.

Media shockingly ignorant of Muslims among us
BY MARK STEYN SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST

March 12, 2006

This week's Voldemort Award goes to the New York Times for their account of a curious case of road rage in North Carolina:

"The man charged with nine counts of attempted murder for driving a Jeep through a crowd at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill last Friday told the police that he deliberately rented a four-wheel-drive vehicle so he could 'run over things and keep going.' "

The driver in question was Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar.

Whoa, don't jump to conclusions. The Times certainly didn't. As the report continued:

"According to statements taken by the police, Mr. Taheri-azar, 22, an Iranian-born graduate of the university, felt that the United States government had been 'killing his people across the sea' and that his actions reflected 'an eye for an eye.'"

"His people"? And who exactly would that be? Taheri-azar is admirably upfront about his actions. As he told police, he wanted to "avenge the deaths or murders of Muslims around the world."

And yet the M-word appears nowhere in the Times report. Whether intentionally or not, they seem to be channeling the great Sufi theologian and jurist al-Ghazali, who died a millennium ago but whose first rule on the conduct of dhimmis -- non-Muslims in Muslim society -- seem to have been taken on board by the Western media:

The dhimmi is obliged not to mention Allah or His Apostle. . . .

Are they teaching that at Columbia Journalism School yet?

A fellow called Mohammed mows down a bunch of students? Just one of those things -- like a gran'ma in my neck of the woods a couple of years back who hit the wrong pedal in the parking lot and ploughed through a McDonald's, leaving the place a hideous tangle of crumbled drywall, splattered patties and incendiary hot apple-pie filling. Yet, according to his own statements, Taheri-azar committed an act of ideological domestic terrorism, which he'd planned for two months. He told police he was more disappointed more students in his path weren't struck and that he'd rented the biggest vehicle the agency had in order to do as much damage to as many people as possible. The Persian car pet may have been flooring it, but the media are idling in neutral, if not actively reversing away from the story as fast as they can. Taheri-azar informed the judge he was "thankful for the opportunity to spread the will of Allah," and it was apparently the will of Allah that he get behind the wheel of Allah.

Meanwhile, a new Washington Post/ABC poll finds that, in the words of the Post, "nearly half of Americans -- 46 percent -- have a negative view of Islam, seven percentage points higher than in the tense months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, when Muslims were often targeted for violence."

"Often" targeted? Want to put some hard numbers on that? Like to compare the "violence" Americans perpetrated on Muslims after the slaughter of thousands of their fellow citizens in the name of Allah with, say, the death toll perpetrated by Muslims annoyed over some itsy-bitsy cartoons in an obscure Danish newspaper? In September 2001, 99.99999 percent of Americans behaved with remarkable forbearance. If they're less inclined to give the benefit of the doubt these days, perhaps it's because of casual slurs like the Post's or the no-jihad-to-see-here-folks tone of the Times.

Ronald Stockton of the University of Michigan doesn't see it that way: "You're getting a constant drumbeat of negative information about Islam," he told the Post. By "negative information," Professor Stockton presumably means the London bombings, and the Bali bombings, and the Madrid bombings and the Istanbul bombings. But surely it's worth asking why in 2006 the Washington Post needs a man with a name like "Ronald Stockton" to explain Islam to us? The diversity bores in the media go out of their way to hire writers of color, writers of gender, writers of orientation. Yet, five years after 9/11, where's the New York Times' Muslim columnist? Where's the ''Today Show's'' Islamic weather girl? Why, indeed, are all the Muslim voices in the press broadly on the right -- Amir Taheri in the New York Post, Stephen Schwartz in the Weekly Standard, Fouad Ajami in the Wall Street Journal?

If Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar is not a free-lance terrorist, then what is he? Who is he? What's he thinking? In the absence of any explanatory voices from the Muslim community, all we have are the bare bones of his resume: He's a 22-year old UNC psychology major who graduated in December. And what's revealing is the link between Taheri-azar's grievance and his action.

Take him at his word: He's upset about "the treatment of Muslims around the world" -- presumably at the hands of Israelis on the West Bank, of the Russians in Chechnya, the Indians in Kashmir, the Americans in the Sunni Triangle and the Danes in the funny pages. So what does he do to avenge Islam? He goes to the rental agency, takes out the biggest car on the lot, drives it to UNC and rams it into the men and women he's spent the last few years studying with and socializing with -- the one group of infidels he knows really well.

How many Muslims feel similarly? Not many in America, perhaps -- if only when compared to Europe: For all the multiculti blather, the United States still does a better job assimilating immigrants than France or Germany. A recent poll found that 40 percent of British Muslims want sharia introduced in the United Kingdom and 20 percent sympathized with the "feelings and motives" of the July 7 London Tube bombers. Or, more accurately, 20 percent were prepared to admit to a pollster they felt sympathy, which suggests the real figure might be somewhat higher. Huge numbers of Muslims -- many of them British subjects born and bred -- see their fellow Britons blown apart on trains and buses and are willing to rationalize the actions of mass murderers.

"East is east and west is west/And ne'er the twain shall meet," wrote Kipling. Obviously, they meet every moment of the day -- the cabbie driving you to your appointment in Washington, the affable fellow at the corner store. But proximity isn't the same as understanding: Taheri-azar and that 20 percent of British Muslims think they know "the west" and they don't like it. By contrast, the New York Times and Co. insist they like "the east" but go to an awful lot of trouble to avoid finding out anything that would ruffle their illusions. The twain would never meet, said Kipling, "till Earth and Sky meet presently/At God's great judgment seat."

I'd rather find out before then. Five years after Sept. 11, it's astonishing how little we still know about the West's Muslim populations.

©Mark Steyn, 2006

From The UK Independent:

Obituary: Jesse Taylor
Guitarist with the Joe Ely Band

Published: 11 March 2006

Jesse Taylor, guitarist: born Lubbock, Texas 1950; (three daughters); died Austin, Texas 7 March 2006.

In the mid-1970s, Jesse Taylor made his mark with the country/ rock Joe Ely Band; and his energetic playing was so inventive that he was dubbed Jesse "Guitar" Taylor. Although he worked with Ely for many years, he also accompanied scores of musicians at the rougher and more creative end of country music.

When Taylor visited Liverpool in 1994, accompanying the Texas songwriter Don McCalister Jnr, he told me,

I played some of those places with the chicken wire, and if it gets real rowdy, you're sure glad it's there. It didn't matter if you were playing good or not, as drunken cowboys are pretty indiscriminate.

Jesse Taylor was born in Lubbock, Texas in 1950, the son of a labourer. The music of local star Buddy Holly, together with that of the Ventures, made him want to be a guitarist. When he was 15, he was part of Jimmie Dale Gilmore's first group, the T. Nickel House Band, and became the first white musician to have a residency at Lubbock's renowned venue Stubb's Bar-B-Q.

Joe Ely was the musician who had shown the most promise in Lubbock since Holly, and Taylor played a crucial role in his albums Joe Ely (1977) and Honky Tonk Masquerade (1978). The band then travelled to the UK as the opening act for Merle Haggard, when New Wave music was becoming fashionable. They befriended the Clash and, in an unlikely move for a country band, then toured with them in 1979 and 1980. The Ely band also worked with the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen.

When I asked Taylor about his best work with Ely, he said,

I really loved that album that we did in London called Live Shots [1980]. It was recorded in four different venues and Joe Strummer and Mick Jones are on the record with us. We started out as a country band and, once we started touring with the Clash, we became rock. We may have lost some fans along the way, but not many. Those gigs could be scary though: the kids could be out of control and spitting at you and throwing themselves on stage.

When Taylor left the band in 1982, he settled in Austin, but still worked with Ely on various projects. He also played with Billy Joe Shaver, Butch Hancock, Kinky Friedman and Townes Van Zandt. Unfortunately, his lifestyle got the better of him and he had to seek treatment. In rehab, he developed his artistic skills and became a gifted painter, holding an exhibition in Austin.

He released the solo albums Texas Tattoo (1998), with several guest vocalists, and South Side Guitar (2001), with a fellow guitarist, John X.Reed. South Side Guitar included "Don't Give Up", a song about cirrhosis, which would be a cause of Taylor's death. He remarked, "When somebody says to me, 'You're dying', I think, 'Well, you're dying too.' "

Spencer Leigh

Barry "Asterisk" Bonds
By George Will

Mar 12, 2006

WASHINGTON -- By now even Barry Bonds, although notably thick-skinned regarding public obloquy, might wish he had retired after the 1998 season, his 13th, when his achievements included 411 home runs, 445 stolen bases -- he is still the only ``400/400'' player in baseball history -- eight All-Star selections and eight Gold Glove awards. He had already won three MVP awards and deserved a fourth, which was given to a lesser but less-obnoxious player. After the required five-year retirement, Bonds would have become a Hall of Famer.

Today, his numbers are much more gaudy. Before 1999, he hit a home run every 16.1 at bats and his highest home run total was 46. Since then he has averaged a home run every 8.5 at bats and had a season high of 73.

Those numbers are why most people who care about baseball wish Bonds had never played, and hope he never does again. The numbers, examined in the lurid light of what is known about the recent role of steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs in sports, and about Bonds' character and associations, invite suspicion and perhaps compel invidious conclusions.

Last week, on the day when this inaugural season of the World Baseball Classic produced two especially fine games for exuberantly festive fans (the Dominican Republic beat Venezuela 11-5; the United States beat Mexico, 2-0), the dark cloud of the Bonds saga yet again blotted out the sunshine. Sports Illustrated released excerpts of a new book, ``Game of Shadows,'' by Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams, two tenacious and respected reporters for the San Francisco Chronicle.

It is no reflection on them to say that their book poses the kind of problem that ordinary people frequently face reading political journalism. Judging the accuracy of their conclusions requires weighing the veracity of their sources. That is problematic because many sources are not identified. An important one, Bonds' ex-mistress, may have an ax to grind, money to make and legal jeopardy to deflect. Some other sources are low-lifes who, in the initial frenzy surrounding this matter, faced federal charges involving, cumulatively, scores of years in prison, but when the dust settled only two people went to jail, and for a total of just seven months.

Even the most responsible journalism sometimes cannot do more than provide evidence to sustain inferences, and sometimes that is quite enough to validate journalistic craftsmanship. Inferences unfavorable to Bonds are encouraged by the fact that he chose to associate with the low-lifes. When Pete Rose sank into trouble, he correctly said that some of the sources of evidence against him were unsavory. But he had immersed himself in their milieu and chose them for associates.

Pending some definitive judicial finding, which is hardly guaranteed, what is a responsible judgment? Begin with the spring of 1999, the year after Bonds, according to Fainaru-Wada and Williams, became obsessively jealous of the adulation accorded Mark McGwire as he hit 70 home runs.

When Bonds reported to spring training in 1999, jaws dropped because he was suddenly so huge. And this very intelligent player was unintelligently huge. For many years, baseball discouraged strength training with weights because of fears that players would become ``muscle-bound,'' losing their flexibility. Jon Miller, the Giants broadcaster, remembers that in 1999, Bonds, for the first time in his career, had trouble turning on an inside pitch. His manager, Dusty Baker, expressed worries to Bonds.

In 2000, in the first inning of the Giants' first spring training game, an opposing player hit a shallow fly ball to left field. Miller grabbed his binoculars to confirm that the left fielder actually was Bonds, who, perhaps because he was doing more judiciously whatever he was doing, looked somewhat less inflated than he had the previous spring. In 2000, Bonds hit 49 home runs.

It is still unclear if there will be judicially imposed punishment in this matter. But condign punishment for a man as proud as Bonds would be administered by the court of public opinion, and exclusion from the Hall of Fame.

In any case, Bonds' records must remain part of baseball's history. His hits happened. Erase them and there will be discrepancies in baseball's bookkeeping about the records of the pitchers who gave them up. George Orwell said that in totalitarian societies, yesterday's weather could be changed by decree. Baseball, indeed America, is not like that.

Besides, the people who care about the record book -- serious fans -- will know how to read it. That may be Bonds' biggest worry.

George F. Will is a 1976 Pulitzer Prize winner, whose columns are syndicated in more than 400 magazines and newspapers worldwide.