Nat Hentoff is arguably the most honest and consistantly fair liberal in America. In this week's Village Voice he writes an article about Iran's practice of stoning of women for adultery ("allowing" oneself to get raped qualifies for stoning) under President Ahmadinejad.
 
The article states, in part,

As human rights lawyer Lily Mazahery, president of the Legal Rights Institute reports, "in 99 percent of these cases, the accused women have received no legal representation because, under the Shariah legal system, their testimony is at best worth only half the value of the testimony of men." 

Mazahery, the Persian American lawyer whose mission has long been to save Iranian women from this and other brutal treatment, tells me that sangsar, "dating back to the dark ages," was, for a time, suspended by the pre—revolutionary regime due to pressure from international human rights organizations, combined with protests from civilized persons around the world. But when the mullahs took over in the 1979 revolution, they brought back Shariah law, and when this president came to power, he reinstituted public stonings, as a "religious principle," against women.

No reporter from the Lame Stream Media has asked either former "moderate" Iranian president Khatami or current President Ahmadinejad about this practice. And, of course, the fawning Mike Wallace did not mention this when he questioned the current president in Tehran. Don't believe he raised this issue with specific cases when he was safely back in New York, either.

Hentoff's article has links to two online petitions that call for the saving of an Iranian woman, Malak Ghorbany, from stoning. That effort is a more eloquent and pertinent conclusion than anything I could write.

Jack Kemp (not the politician)   9 21 06