MSNBC: Don’t expose Muslim atrocities

MSNBC’s new golden girl was in a pickle: If someone sees a black person committing rape or domestic violence, should he report it if it makes black people look bad?

Or if Muslims see wife-beating, genital mutilation and childhood sexual abuse, should they just keep it to themselves, because saying something gives ammunition to the “Islamophobes”?

The questions appear to be simple. But they posed a challenge for the host of the new “Melissa Harris-Perry” show when guest Mona Eltahawy talked about her Foreign Policy magazine cover story about abuse of women by men in the Muslim world.

Eltahawy speaks from experience: She had her arms broken in a demonstration in Egypt and was tortured and raped in an Egyptian jail cell.

So she seemed surprised to find Harris-Perry questioning her right to draw attention to “traditions” such as involuntary female circumcision, wife-beating and childhood sexual abuse.

“I start with a little bit of trepidation in this conversation,” the host said, “in part because I know some of the critiques of this. The very idea that Western press, those that are not from these nations, who are not Muslim ourselves, who are not part of these traditions can look at your article and say ‘ahhh, look at how horrible those men, or those societies, or that religion is.’

“And that is part of the reason why, for example, we have an under-reporting of rape and domestic violence in African American communities,” Harris-Perry continued. “Because we know the violence enacted on black men by police, so we often don’t call. Right?”

Read more here.

Biden: Tea Party stopped us from growing economy

Vice President Joe Biden admitted to a group of supporters in New Hampshire this afternoon that the President would have been able help the economy “much, more” if the Tea Party hadn’t taken the House.

Biden showed the audience the Obama campaigns chart of job growth during the President’s first term in office and accused the Tea Party for stalling the recovery, because of the debt limit fight.

“Imagine where we’d be if the Tea Party hadn’t taken control of the House of Representatives,” Biden said adding that they were “a group set on obstructionism.”

Read more here.

‘Uncommitted’ Gives Obama a Run in Kentucky

‘Uncommitted’ is keeping it closer than expected in the Kentucky Democratic presidential primary. With 104 of 120 counties counted, President Barack Obama leads ‘Uncommitted’ by only 20 percentage points. The tally so far: Obama with 105,487 votes (or 60.04 percent of the vote), while ‘Uncommitted’ claims 70,211 votes (or 39.96 percent).

(UPDATE: With 99.8 percent reporting, Barack Obama has 119,245 votes, while ‘Uncommitted’ has 86,789 votes. That is, Obama has 57.9 percent of the vote, while ‘Uncommitted’ has 42.1 percent.)

The Republican primary isn’t nearly as close. Presumptive Republican nominee, Mitt Romney, leads his closest rival, Ron Paul, by over 55 percentage points so far. The current tally: Romney has 107,362 votes (or 66.85 percent of the vote), Paul with 20,117 votes (12.53 percent), Rick Santorum with 14,230 (8.86 percent), Newt Gingrich with 9,459 votes (5.89 percent), and ‘Uncommitted’ with 9,428 (5.87 percent of the vote).

Paul, Santorum, and Gingrich have dropped out (or, in Paul’s case, essentially dropped out) of the race. Needless to say, ‘Uncommitted’ is not an actual candidate.