Much has been made of the irony of President Obama, refusing to take questions from the press while signing the "Press Freedom Act." The murder of Daniel Pearl has been sited as the reason for this new law which expands the State Department's annual human rights reports to include a description of press freedoms in each country. What appears to have been ignored is the attempt to redefine the pertinent facts in this case. Daniel Pearl was not killed because he was a journalist. He was killed because he was a Jew and an American. The moment before he was beheaded and decapitated, he wasn't asked what he did for a living. He was asked his religion.
One can only wonder why the current party in power, whose stock-in-trade is racial and ethnic politics, would go out of its way to ignore a true and most egregious hate crime.