Sunday morning is a fun time to rest, relax and get ready for kickoff.

I’ll sometimes watch CBS Sunday Morning to get my fill of artsy fartsy stuff, something funny from Bill Geist, and occasionally an interesting commentary from Ben Stein.

Then I see Nancy Giles do her commentary about Republicans at their recent debates, not so much about the candidates, but about the people in the audience “applauding at the idea of death,” as she says.

Nancy, let me say this as simply as I can, they were not applauding death; they were applauding justice. But, in your narrow, leftist world, that’s all you can see, the potential death of the murderer, not the victims needlessly massacred by a madman. In fact, victims were never mentioned in your little two minute bit. You used your time to mention how bad the crowd was for cheering, how the Republican candidates didn’t repudiate the crowd, and how this guy on death row should be seen as a victim of a crazed mob.

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Rifqa Bary is the 17-year-old girl who converted from Islam to Christianity and fled from her family in fear for her life. For more than nine months now, the Islamic machine has been trying to make an example of her, as a warning that even in the U.S., those who try to leave Islam will fail. Rifqa’s entire legal strategy, meanwhile, has hinged on ignoring the Islamic aspects of the case, although Islam’s death penalty for apostasy is the only thing that explains why she is in danger. Instead, her lawyers are trying to obtain for her Special Immigration Juvenile Status (SIJS). And in this yet again her parents’ aggressive and manipulative attorney, Omar Tarazi, has outfoxed them.

This was her lawyers’ objective, the end run: if they could keep Rifqa out of her dangerous home environment and secure immigration status, then it didn’t matter how they did it, as long as the goal was achieved. What her legal team did not understand was the nature of the threat and the enemy Rifqa faced. They were playing by a set of rules that were inapplicable to the challenge they faced. By pretending that Sharia was not the elephant in the room, they were out-strategized.

I remember back last September when I spoke to Rifqa’s Florida attorney, John Stemberger, on the phone and asked him why apostasy was not being introduced. It defined the threat to her life. Without the motive, there was no threat. He insisted that it wasn’t necessary. He said there was no way she would be sent back to Ohio from Florida, where she had fled to get as far away from her father as possible. “No way” would she be made to go back to Ohio, Stemberger said. In order to get Rifqa sent back to Ohio, he explained, her parents would have to open a court case, and in order to do that they would have to admit to some kind of abuse. And Stemberger said they would never do that. (more…)

A week ago, news began to break in San Francisco about a targeted gay-bashing crime that allegedly occurred on February 26.

Three cousins from Hayward have been charged in San Francisco with a hate crime and assault for allegedly firing a BB rifle at the face of a man they believed was gay, an attack the men videotaped, authorities said Wednesday.

Investigators believe the assailants chose the victim because he appeared to be gay. When the men were pulled over, police found a video camera that was used to film the shooting, investigators said.

Clearly, of course, this had to be a Christian right-wing, tea party, anti-government, bigoted homophobe from the South. Right?

Wrong.

The three men, Shafiq Hashemi, 21, Sayed Bassam, 21, and Mohammad Habibzada, 24, the driver, were arrested. (more…)