I pose the following question to you, my tender reader:

Will Obama’s next nominee for Commerce Secretary be a tax cheat, or a lobbyist?

Why does the mainstream media frequently identify Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu and his Likud Party as “hard-line”?

• CNN: “hard-line, former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu” (2/10/09)
• Associated Press: “Benjamin Netanyahu’s hard-line Likud Party (2/11/09)
• Los Angeles Times: “[Netanyahu's] hard-line agenda” (1/25/09)

For help, I checked the dictionary, which defines hard-line as “adhering rigidly to a dogma, theory, or plan; uncompromising or unyielding.  That didn’t help, since both Likud leaders in general and Netanyahu in particular have shown a willingness to negotiate and compromise in the hope of peace.

Wikipedia (which admittedly is not authoritative) states, “In politics, hardline refers to the doctrine, policy, and posturing of a government or political body as being absolutist, or authoritarian.  Hardline movements are usually extremist, militant, and uncompromising.”

I also found it puzzling to see leaders of Israel’s enemies, the terrorist group Hamas and the insane-ocracy Iran, identified as “hard-line.”  Apparently the defense of Israel and the annihilation of Israel are seen as equally extremist or uncompromising positions.

Does someone have another explanation?

Keith Burgess-Jackson, Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Texas at Arlington, has this comment about Cormac Murphy-O’Connor’s column in The Times (UK):

Here is a column about the compatibility of science and religion. Not only is there no incompatibility between science and religion; there can’t be. Science is an attempt to understand the natural world. It has nothing to say about (1) whether there is a supernatural world or (2) what the supernatural world is like, if there is such a world. Think of the natural world as a box. Science makes claims about what’s inside the box. It has nothing to say about what’s outside the box. Religion makes claims about what’s outside the box.

Murphey-O’Conner notes that Darwin wrote,

“It seems to me absurd to doubt that a man may be an ardent Theist and an evolutionist.”