Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D.

Aladdin Sane (1973).

Here are the final 13 kilometers of today's stage of the Tour of Switzerland. The weather conditions were atrocious. The final climb was brutal. How are these not the toughest athletes in sport?

A vacuum-cleaner salesman knocked on my door this afternoon. Literally.

Can Chelsea Clinton do this?

Here.

Here.

Everyone (especially Leftists) should read this essay by Roger Kimball.

I have come up with a way to describe terrorist acts that neither asserts nor implies nor presupposes that they are Islamic. Suppose I'm a reporter informing my audience of what happened in Orlando the other day. I would say the following:

A 29-year-old American citizen of Afghan descent who believed that he was acting in accordance with the will of Allah, as expressed in the Koran, killed 49 people and wounded 53 others in an Orlando, Florida, nightclub early Sunday morning.

Every factual claim in this report is verifiably true, so there can be no question that I have misrepresented anything. Note that I have said nothing about either the truth or the justifiability of the belief in question (viz., that the killer was acting in accordance with the will of Allah). That the man had a certain belief is a fact. Whether that belief is true or justifiable is an evaluation, which should have no place in news reporting. The report leaves it to the audience to come to conclusions regarding these evaluative matters.

It might be said that in singling out only one of the killer's beliefs, I am implying that that belief was the operative belief. Perhaps so, but this problem can be solved by adding as many other beliefs as the reporter knows to be true and which might have been operative, for example, that homosexuals are evil, that homosexuals deserve to die, or that Allah hates homosexuals. In short, the reporter should describe the mindset of the agent as thoroughly as he or she can, without making any claim as to the truth or justifiability of the agent's beliefs, leaving it to the audience to determine which belief or beliefs were operative.

What I object to is a reporter's omission of the killer's belief that he was acting in accordance with the will of Allah, as expressed in the Koran. This is manipulative, and therefore disrespectful to the audience.

To the editor:

I disagree with The Times’ belief that President Obama’s refusal to utter the words “radical Islam” is a non-issue. (“Trump isn’t the only Republican to play word games with terrorism,” editorial, June 15)

The president is restrained by a lack of trust in the American people. This became clear early on when he began to lecture us, talk down to us and deride those who regard Islamist killers as more than workplace violence.

This is why he will not call Islamist terror Islamist terror; he does not trust that we can distinguish between murderous jihadists clinging to a medieval interpretation of Islam and normative practitioners of modern Islam. He does not realize how this debases the public square and diminishes confidence in his leadership.

It escapes his notice that this is the soft bigotry of low expectations directed at the very people who chose him to lead.

Paul Bloustein, Cincinnati

Note from KBJ: Bingo. See my post of yesterday.

Here.