Behind the Scenes

Just to give you an idea of what happens around here behind the scenes, here's a selection of stories I am looking at to post on.

- Got an e-mail from Caleb referencing an AP story that commented on the popularity of the Passion in the Middle East. Nice to see there is one thing that Muslims and Conservative Christians agree on.

- Also an article by Dennis Prager on why Christians don't become Suicide Bombers. He ducks the issue of Domestic Terrorism, much of which is pursued in the name of Christianity; to be fair, most domestic terrorists choose not to kill themselves along with their victims.

There's this quote from the Prager Article, that I could probably do something with, "There is Palestinian terror for the same reasons there is Muslim terror elsewhere. A significant part of the Muslim world wishes to destroy those non-Muslims -- Americans, Israelis, Filipinos, Nigerians, Sudanese blacks -- who prevent Islam from violently attaining power."

- Joel Mowbray takes on CAIR in his latest article. Apparently CAIR regrets the mistreatment of the bodies of those mercenaries, but not the deaths themselves, which, I have to admit, is a questionable position. On the other hand, Mowbray continues to obsuficate the actual nature of what these mercenaries were doing, describing them simply as Americans.

- There must be some way to tie these stories together; but they are all potential landmines (well, except Dennis Prager's which is clearly down on Muslims, despite his crocodile tears over how "good Muslims" must look. Certainly, it would be odd to go from defending Muslims against Prager in one paragraph, and in the next using them to comment on the possible anti-Semitism of "The Passion."

- Joel Mowbray's article is also problematic because it hinges on one factual question; are we at war with Iraqi resistance groups or not? Or are they simple terrorists? It's a tricky question, although I could probably do something with the idea that Conservative Commentators want it both ways. They want to remind us we are at war so we'll vote for President Bush on Monday and then they want us to see the war as over so they can portray our enemies as terrorists instead of soldiers on Tuesday.

- I'm note sure all these threads can fit together cleanly; maybe some sort of gimmicky technique to tie them all together? I know I'll pretend to write a behind the scenes column showing how I put my ideas together. That will save me the time of having to actually put them together.