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‘My daughter’s on the no-fly list’ wr…

‘My daughter’s on the no-fly list’ writes Chris Kelly. She’s 12 years old. So I should hate the No Fly List. Besides the personal inconvenience, it runs counter to a solid third of the Bill of Rights. But I’m conflicted. Because I have a pretty good idea why my daughter’s on the list. It’s because she has the same name as this guy: In 1993 this IRA thug walked into a fish shop in Belfast with a bomb that went off prematurely (of course) injuring 57 people, including a 79-year-old woman and two two-year-old boys. It also killed ten people,…

Compare and Contrast

Two interesting op-eds in the Boston Globe today. The first talks about Karen Hughes equation of the women who marched on the DC Mall last week with terrorists. Regardless of where you fall on the abortion debate, the casual and easy equation of people with different views than this administration is a disturbing phenomenon. (It has happened before with respect to teachers; further proof we are preparing for the Rapture?) The emotional associations with the word “terrorist” after 9/11, across the country, is profound. I think it’s much more evocative than “communist” ever was for my generation. When disagreement becomes…

Phear of Fobias [Updated]

Today Yahoo! News is reporting about the number of religious attacks made against Jews and Muslims in 2002. According to the FBI, the number of attacks against Jews greatly outnumbered those against Muslims. More telling are the numbers from 2001, where attacks against Jews outnumbered attacks against Muslims almost 2-1. Now, there very good reasons as to why the numbers of attacks against Muslims might be depressed, particularly in 2001 (see the DRUM website for an immigration angle). However, I still find the numbers telling. Judeophobia and Islamophobia spring from the same well [see Ali Asani’s excellent speech on the…