links for 2011-07-08

"While the majority of Hispanics in the United States are Catholic, some studies have estimated that there are as many as 200,000 Hispanic converts to Islam in this country."

"The organization says this reflects a national trend. Currently, there are no African American hosts or anchors on any national news show, cable or broadcast network, from the hours of 5PM-11PM. The NAACP ‘s view is that this is especially troubling because these prime time slots are among the most influential in daily news, with prime time hosts in cable often enjoying latitude to express their opinions, and evening news anchors traditionally seen as the most credible voices in weekday news broadcasts.

"In the age of Herman Cain, we should all know that a token black host wouldn’t necessarily mean anything good or bad for the black community in terms of the substance of opinions expressed. On that issue, we’d be much more concerned with ensuring a variety of black commentators."

"The only real reason that Anthony is even mentioned in the same breath as Simpson is because she was acquitted of first degree murder. And many of those who bothered to pay any attention to the case fervently believed she was guilty and expected her to be convicted. The resemblance ends abruptly there. The hard fact of the Anthony case and verdict is that other than what the media tried to make of it, this was never more than a case of an overreaching District Attorney trying to squeeze a first degree murder conviction out of what by all evidence was arguably at best a case of parental criminal neglect and lying. But the media, in the usual clinical search for anything that smacks of a scintilla of salacious sensationalism, painted it as the second coming of the Simpson crime and trial of the century."