Sniper a Muslim Terrorist. Imagine That
Here's a fine essay condeming the mainstream press for its efforts to ignore the obvious in the Beltway Sniper case. The obvious? The sniper is a homegrown Islamic terrorist.

An excerpt: Hmmmm...an African-American fellow by the name of Muhammed. Nope, no Muslims here, folks, nothing to see, move along.

The disappointment among the press corps that it wasn't an evil right-wing white militia type is almost palpable. Now they don't get to talk about the culture of hate, and blame Rush Limbaugh, and talk radio, and all of us evil right-wing bloggers. In particular they don't get to do it two weeks before a mid-term election, in which they can paint Republicans as bigoted enablers of right-wing violence.

There's more... and the comments that follow it are also worth reading.

Also worth reading today: Jonah Goldberg's piece in the Wall Street Journal. An excerpt: One reason the media were so willing to paint the mystery murderer as a disgruntled white guy was that the experts led them in that direction. A seemingly endless parade of profilers, ex-cops, ex-FBI agents, security experts, hostage negotiators, criminologists and forensic psychologists - or people who just play them on TV - insisted that the Washington-area sniper would have to be a Caucasian male loner, probably ex-military, with a score to settle and a trunk full of Soldier of Fortune magazines. Phil Donahue represented the conventional wisdom nicely when he gleefully insisted that the sniper had to be white.

Instead, he was an African-American Islamic wacko.