Gather a dozen top bloggers representing a wide variety of perspectives, professions and interests and you get coverage of a bunch of topics. Just look at what the Examiner Blog Boarders are talking about today: Do Muslim taxi drivers at the Minneapolis airport have the right to deny service to somebody who happens to have their dog with them or be carrying a bottle of booze? Ed Morrissey of Captain’s Quarters blog has been following the issue and his thoughts are especially interesting because he was a hack at one time early in his adult life and because he points to a recent fatwa as evidence that claims of religious discrimination by the Muslim airport cabbies as the proverbial nose under the tent problem: “This fatwa, issued by the Minnesota chapter of the Muslim Society, exists as an attempt to foist Islam onto Americans who have not chosen it. It will not end with service dogs and alcohol; as Ibrahim notes, it has already gone beyond both. They will eventually refuse service to vast swaths of the traveling public, which will render MSP’s cabstands a huge bottleneck for those who must use the airport.” Read the rest of Ed’s post here. Lots of folks are eagerly awaiting the clash tonight of Ohio State and Florida for national college football championship. Lorie Byrd, the Examiner Blog Boarder at Wizbangblog.com is counting the hours to the start of the new “24” season. Find out why here. If you’ve read “We the Media” by Examiner Blog Boarder Dan Gillmor, you know he talks a lot about the end of top-down communications and the imperative for instutions to be more open and transparent. Dan blogs today about what he heard when he took his message to the folks at the National Education Association. If you haven’t read “We the Media,” you should. It and James Surowiecki’s “The Wisdom of Crowds” are two of the essential works for understanding the Internet Age of Media. Examiner Blog Boarder Prof. Stephen Bainbridge of UCLA Law School wonders about the controversy in Spain caused when Catholic bishops there refused a request from Muslims to convert a cathedral to an ecumenical facility open to people of all faiths. Was there ever a time in your life when you would have read a thousand-plus page book about the 1988 presidential race? Blog Boarder Jim Geraghty of National Review Online confesses to having done so, but there has actually been a pay-off and it concerns Sen. Joe Biden. Read it here. Examiner Blog Boarder LaShawn Barber has been on top of the Duke Lacrosse players rape case from Day One and says she has never seen mainstream media reporters so eaqer to report so uncritically the words of a prosecutor and the cops. LaShawn wonders if maybe lots of the mainstream media types covering the case were covertly cheering for the victim. Go here and see what you think. Marc “Armed Liberal” Danziger of the Examiner Blog Board isn’t posting much this week because, he says, it’s tough to do so with only two good fingers. Find out why he only has two good fingers this week here. If you caught Examiner Blog Boarder Betsy Newmark’s Blog Board piece last week, you know she asked when apologies would be heard from all those folks who automatically jumped to the conclusion of guilt about the three Duke Lacrosse team members charged with rape of a Black stripper. They had to be guilty because they are white, the conclusion jumpers argued, which is, as Betsy noted, fundamentally arguing on the basis of a racist stereotype. Today, Betsy is pointing to a column by ABC’s Ben Mankiewicz as a perfect illustration of the very racist stereotyping she had in mind last week. Another Examiner Blog Boarder is talking about the Duke case, too. Mary Katharine Ham says “Nifonged” is now officially a verb. She has lots of other thoughts on the case, too, and she is a Durham native, so listen up. Bob Cox is an Examiner Blog Boarder and the founder and president of the Media Bloggers Association. Bob has been working tirelessly for more than two years to help bloggers upgrade the level of professionalism they bring to their blogging. AP has a story on some of Bob’s efforts. Be sure and check out the commentary section tomorrow because you will find a superb piece by Examiner Blog Boarder Jeralyn Merritt arguing that the upcoming case of Brian Nichols might be the beginning of a national re-examination of the death penalty. Nichols, you may recall, is the guy who ripped a gun from a Georgia court deputy and shot and killed the deputy and a judge, then fled. A woman he took hostage, talked to him all night about, among much else, Jesus. He turned himself in the next morning. Regardless of your take on the death penalty debate, Jeralyn provides a sterling exposition of her view that thetime has come to do away with the death penalty. Jeralyn blogs at TalkLeft.com Finally, and certainly not the least of The Examiner Blog Boarders is Win Myers. He broke the story of University of Pennylvania president, Amy Guttmann, who posed with a student dressed as a suicide bomber. Today he’s reporting on new developments, including the fact Guttmann apparently is among the candidates to be the new president of Harvard University.
