Maybe He Should Be Sent To An Unnamed Third Country For Questioning

The indictment of a former Florida professor on charges of being a Palestinian terrorist has cast a very different light on some past punditry.

After flying to Tampa to interview him, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote last year that the University of South Florida’s attempt to fire Sami Al-Arian shed light on “what kind of universities we desire, how much dissent we dare tolerate and how we treat minorities in times of national stress.” He noted that the proceedings began after “Bill O’Reilly invited Mr. Al-Arian on his Fox News show and virtually accused him of being a terrorist.”

[…]

O’Reilly says that “we took a lot of heat. And when it comes our way, no fruit basket. We had this guy dead. . . . The game being played now in the media, if you’re in a minority group, is that if you can’t win the debate, you demonize the person reporting the story by calling them anti-whatever. I’m not playing that game.”

I guess they repealed that pesky presumption of innocence thing in the Patriot Act. Or has The O’Reilly Factor been deputized by Ashcroft to act as a fair and balanced military tribunal?