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Noor Faleh Almaleki has died in Phoenix. Thus, we have another development in the case of her father, 48-year-old Faleh Hassan Almaleki, who fled the United States after it is alleged that he hit the 20-year-old Noor and the mother of her boyfriend with his car.
Eleven years ago gay teen Matthew Shephard was beaten and left to die on a Wyoming fencepost. That was also the year three white men in a truck, in another sickening act of violence, pulled African American James Byrd behind them until he was dead. This past Wednesday, President Obama signed the Matthew Shephard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act. In a fairly common practice, it was passed as part of a totally unrelated spending bill.
A couple of months ago, Elizabeth looked at a big Newsweek piece on polyamory and criticized it for its lack of depth, neglect of religious angles, and its unrealistic portrayal of poly communities. Well, compared to this CNN story with an attention-grabbing headline of “Mate debate: Is monogamy realistic?,” that Newsweek article was a masterpiece. Apparently the premise of this article is that in oldentimes, people were monogamous but in these complicated modern times, it’s a completely unrealistic virtue and should be dropped post haste.
Quite a few newspapers and television stations across America have posted various versions of the following short Associated Press story on their websites. For the sake of clarity, here’s the whole report:
There’s something curious about the way the media have been handling the difficult and complicated story of Rifqa Bary. She’s the Ohio teenager (pictured here) who fled to Florida after she converted to Christianity over concerns her Muslim father might kill her. We last looked at this story when CNN inexplicably referred to the girl as “Muslim” even though the whole point of this saga is that she’s not.
A couple of years ago, there was a flurry of stories about a study on abortion rates worldwide. Published in the Lancet based on research by the Guttmacher Institute, the stories said that abortion rates were the same throughout the world, regardless of legality.
Anyone concerned about America’s fertility industry should ponder “21st Century Babies” being posted in installlments on the the New York Times website. Writer Stephanie Saul is doing an excellent job of revealing the moral dilemmas and, frankly, distress and suffering that may occur when potential parents decide to try in-vitro and intrauterine insemination.
Much to my parents’ chagrin, I resisted early bedtimes from a very young age. So they would let me stay up and watch Johnny Carson. When Carson retired, I moved to Letterman. Somewhere along the line he lost me. He’s just seemed off for, well, a decade. And now I have Craig Ferguson, who I greatly enjoy. Here’s a sample.
