The debacle of the Italian left

So, now that most of the ballots have been counted, there is no doubt that the center-right candidate Ugo Cappellacci has won—with about 52 percent of the vote against 43 percent—regional elections in Sardinia against a left-wing coalition led by the outgoing governor and Tiscali internet company-founder, Renato Soru.

It’s quite a surprising result, since most pre-election surveys had predicted a narrow victory for Soru, and also a terrible blow for the Democratic party (PD) and its secretary Walter Veltroni, who in fact offered his resignation this morning, and this afternoon confirmed it despite his party’s (weak) rejection. As a matter of fact Sardinia is the second region (after Abruzzo last December) the center-right have captured from the center-left since its victory in April 2008’s national elections.

The center-left’s defeat is confirmation that last year’s electoral win by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is “a watershed event,” and that “Silvio Berlusconi’s adversaries are incapable of analysis and of facing a new political era,” writes Corriere della Sera newspaper in his today’s editorial (in Italian), titled “The roller.” But, in his j’accuse, Massimo Franco, the author of the editorial, should have included some other people in the bunch, for example most of the mainstream Italian media … er, by the way, what about  Corriere itself, Massimo?

Is the flag of Shariah already waving over the US?

When the hard part of what you are trying to do or to understand or to investigate is in the many small details, you can say, along with the old saying, “the devil is in the details.” So, it may happen that an apparently minor news might turned out to be much less insignificant than anyone thought.

Take, for instance, the case of the beheading of a woman whose husband, Muzzammil Hassan, an influential member of the local Muslim community of Orchard Park (a town south of Buffalo, New York), has been charged with second-degree murder after he himself reported her death to police Thursday. Hassan is the founder and chief executive officer of a broadcasting station, Bridges TV, aimed to help portray Muslims in a more positive light.

What would be interesting to know is why this Muslim leader, should he be found guilty, chose beheading as a means to murder his wife. Furthermore, what do Qur’an and Hadith say about beheading enemies? And which relation is there between honor killings, beheadings, and Shariah law? Of course, finding the answers to these questions would help us understand whether or not the flag of Shariah is already waving over the US. Will the mainstream media investigate all of this, or will political correctness trump investigative journalism? (Thanks: ACT! for America)