Day: March 27, 2002

Nigerian Woman’s Adultery Death Sentence Thrown Out

A sharia appeals court recently overturned the death sentence of Safiya Husaini, 35, who had been ordered stoned to death after being convicted of adultery. Safiya’s case had become a worldwide cause and an embarrassment to Nigeria’s government.

The sharia court ruled that the adultery in question took place before the sharia law had been passed, and so the crime was beyond the court’s jurisdiction.

The issue is not likely to go away, however, even though Nigeria’s justice minister, Godwin Agabi, recently ordered sharia state courts to rewrite their rules to bring them in harmony with Nigeria’s national criminal statutes. But, in fact, just as the decision to throw out Safiya’s conviction was announced, it was revealed that another divorced woman had been sentenced to death after being convicted of adultery by an Islamic court.

Nigeria is deeply divided between Muslims and Christians. The imposition of sharia law in parts of Nigeria have led to riots that have left thousands of people dead.

Muslims have had enough influence to impose sharia courts on 12 of Nigeria’s 36 states. The Nigerian justice minister insisted that it is illegal for sharia courts to impose harsher sentences on Muslims than the national law allowed for.

Nigeria will hold elections in early 2003, however, and the issue of Islamic law will be a major issue in those elections.

Sources:

Woman spared Nigeria stoning death. CNN, March 25, 2002.

Sharia court frees Nigerian woman. The BBC, March 25, 2002.

Charles Paul Freund’s “In Praise of Vulgarity”

I normally don’t like to just say “here’s a link, go read it,” but Charles Paul Freund’s article, In Praise of Vulgarity, is one of the best essays I have read in a very long time. Unfortunately, it is almost 9,000 words long and doesn’t lend itself well to reading on the web. Print it out and curl up with it for half an hour or check it out in the March 2002 issue of Reason.

The Pundits are Polarized, Not the Public

FoxNews has an article quoting Michael Moore and Bernard Goldberg making the case that the United States is very divided politically. The main evidence for this is the absurdly close 2000 election and the popularity of ideological books such as the recent bestsellers by Moore and Goldberg. I suspect the reality is just the opposite.

One of the longstanding debates between the left and the right is whether the news media — especially broadcast television — is biased toward one side or the other. As someone who is often infuriated at news broadcasts, I think the answer is neither. Rather, news broadcasts are targeted toward a middle-of-the-road relatively non-ideological political position which I suspect the vast majority of Americans subscribe to.

What the Left and Right do not want to hear is that, for the most part, Americans aren’t really into ideological politics. In fact most of the people I know a) are not really interested in politics and b) tend to have a mishmash of views across the ideological spectrum. I see a fair amount of interest in very narrow special interest politics — someone concerned about federal funding for breast cancer research, abortion-related activism, but not much beyond that.

Of course people like Michael Moore and Bernard Goldberg want to think that there is this deep political division and that they are appealing to their respective side, but I suspect sales of their books are driven largely because of the general middle-of-the-road consensus. Personally, being an extremely ideological person in a relatively non-ideological society drives me nuts. My idea of entertaining television is “Crossfire.” So of course the minority of ideological folks, fed up with the bland centrist television news, are going to flock to buy books like Bias or Stupid White Men.

The 2000 election is really the clincher. Moore thinks that because Gore and Bush were separated by a few hundred votes, that is an indication of a divided country. Maybe among hardcore Democrat and Republican activists, but the reason they were so close is that they held almost identical positions. Sure they differed on some of the details — details that most people don’t seem to give a hoot about — but their broader ideological positions were almost identical. Bush moved to the Left on abortion, Gore moved to the Right on free trade, and they looked more like members of the same party during the nationally televised debates than sworn ideological enemies.

If Americans were really divided by ideology, I would have thought Ralph Nader would have actually been able to poll significant numbers. Moore, after all, campaigned incessantly on behalf of Nader as the true left/liberal candidate and I suspect his performance in the polls — under 5 percent — closely reflects the number of people in Moore’s ideological tent.

And 5 percent of adults in the United States is more than enough to make a book like Moore’s a best seller. And the same phenomenon probably explains Goldberg’s success. Yes, 400,000 copies is a lot of books, but it’s still a drop in the buck to the small percentage of committed ideological conservatives.

The claim that Americans are polarized is simply wishful thinking on the part of Moore, Goldberg and other ideological activists.

Source:

There’s a Bias, but Is It Left or Right? FoxNews, March 26, 2002.

More Cow Bingo Madness

Connellsville Area High School plans on using a “Cow Bingo” event as a fund raiser, and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has already sent letters to the school complaining that the event is cruel to the cow.

The event will involve marking the front lawn of the school into 3,025 squares, allowing people to buy a square for $10, with the winner being decided on where the cow decides to do her business.

PETA’s Amy Rhodes sent a letter saying, “We are writing to ask that you ensure that this event is immediately replaced with a more humane and truly entertaining one.”

Principal Robert McLuckey told the Associated Press that the show will go on. “People have already bought tickets for it,” McLuckey said. “We have had a positive response to it overall.”

Source:

Despite PETA opposition, prom fund-raiser goes on. The Associated Press, March 26, 2002.

Guard Who Crushed Kittens Receives One Year Jail Sentence

A former Sing Sing prison guard was sentenced this week to a year in jail for killing five kittens in a garbage compactor.

Saying that the crime was “so offensive and so calculated and so gratuitously cruel, it diminishes the humanity of everybody,” Westchester Supreme Court Justice Kenneth Lange sentenced Ronald Hunlock, 48, to a year in prison.

Hunlock actually received six separate one-year sentences — one for each of the kittens as well as one for the mother cat — but the judge allowed Hunlock to serve the sentences concurrently.

Under 3-year-old New York statute, the maximum prison time Hunlock could have received was two years.

On March 22, 2002, Hunlock was officially fired from his job (he had been on suspension without pay since being arrested) and forfeited over half a million in pension and retirement benefits as a result.

Sources:

Sing Sing guard gets year in jail for crushing cats. Owen Motiz, New York Daily News, March 23, 2002.

Sing Sing guard gets year in jail for killing 5 kittens. Jim Fitzgerald, Associated Press, March 22, 2002.