What do you think happened to the leaders of Afghanistan’s Taliban regime, the patriarchal, extremist government overthrown by American and coalition forces in 2003?  Yes, some were killed in firefights and others thrown into prison.  But one lucky winner has wound up in Yale University’s honors program.

“In some ways I’m the luckiest person in the world,” former Taliban spokesman Rahmatullah Hashemi told the New York Times Magazine.  “I could have ended up in Guantanamo Bay.  Instead I ended up at Yale.”

Steve Yuhas at OpinionEditorials.com notes the ironies: a university that won’t allow the ROTC on campus throws open its doors to one who helped harbor Osama bin Laden; and a man who helped deny education to women in his country gets accepted to an Ivy League school. 

On the same site, Jim Kouri notes that Hashemi is hardly qualified for Yale: he possesses a 4th-grade formal education and never took the SATs.  While ROTC may not allow openly gay recruits, Hashemi has advocated violence against homosexuals. 

And Flagg Youngblood, a Yale alum and former Army Captain now affiliated with Young America's Foundation, says his alma mater’s “actions show that they consider the U.S. military more evil than the Taliban."

For more on this developing story, including Hashemi’s first course selection (“Terrorism: Past, Present and Future”) and his previous tour of the U.S. in 2001 (when he suggested that an offended Afghan woman in the audience must be a problem to her husband), see John Fund’s article, “Jihadi Turns Bulldog.”

4. Pro-lifers achieve two huge victories

A nineteen-year battle between a pro-life activist and the National Organization of Women (NOW) ended Wednesday when the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the activist, Joseph Scheidler.  Yesterday, pro-lifers had more reason to cheer when the governor of South Dakota signed a bill banning nearly all abortions in his state.

In 1986, NOW claimed that pro-lifers who demonstrated in front of abortion clinics were guilty under a racketeering law intended for prosecution of organized crime.  “Trying to characterize those who believe in the pro-life cause as members of organized crime was a stretch from the start,” ADF Senior Counsel Gary McCaleb explains.  “The court [reaffirmed] the obvious intent of the federal law in question:  that it applies to violence used to further robbery or extortion, not the free speech of pro-life advocates.”

Five days later, another pro-life victory was achieved: an abortion ban at the state level.  This is part of a trend toward a “post-Roe era,” says Family Research Council President Tony Perkins. “Give the people or their elected representatives a voice and you will find that most of America wants major changes in the abortion-on-demand regime that has stood only by judicial fiat for 33 years.”

5. The Right continues to embrace podcasting

Since my column on podcasting two weeks ago, I’ve been deluged with praise and interest from individuals and organizations alike (It makes all my research worthwhile to see my column called “a public service” and a “comprehensive, single point of reference!”).  Since then, the Center for Bioethics & Human Dignity has launched a regular bioethics podcast, and I hear the Texas Public Policy Foundation will launch the Texas PolicyCast in about a week.  Let me know how you’re using podcasting to support the Right!

*****

Stay tuned for next week’s column, when I’ll tell you how your tax dollars are being spent on attempts to stifle Social Security reform.  Nothing like watching both your present and future money go down the drain at the same time.