The Fishwrap: Stories that Make No Splash In March

How To Beat Your Wife

According to the Toronto Sun a new book by Hazrat Maulana Ashraf Ali Thanvi details the permissible limits of wife beating and spousal control. The book sold out in Toronto.

“Page 45 contains the rights of the husband, which include his wife’s inability to leave ‘his house without his permission,’ and that his wife must ‘fulfil his desires’ and “not allow herself to be untidy ... but should beautify herself for him ...


“In terms of physical punishment, the book advises that a husband may scold her, ‘beat by hand or stick,’ withhold money from her or ‘pull (her) by the ears,’ but should ‘refrain from beating her excessively.’”

Infanticide Is Ethical

The newest Orwellian term for infanticide is, according to William Saletan of Slate Magazine is “after birth abortion.”

Slate, a left of center publication, begins its vigorous attack on permissible infanticide with a reference to the “crazy religious right.” Slate wants us to know that craziness is not limited to certain unspecified religious orders that object on ethical grounds to partial birth abortion.

“Just when you thought the religious right couldn’t get any crazier, with its personhood amendments and its attacks on contraception, here comes the academic left with an even crazier idea: after-birth abortion.

“No, I didn’t make this up. ‘Partial-birth abortion’ is a term invented by pro-lifers. But ‘after-birth abortion’ is a term invented by two philosophers, Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva. In the Journal of Medical Ethics…”

The Good News

Researchers, according to a story in the Telegraph, have “discovered that at least 100 of the ‘super-Earths’ may be on our galactic doorstep, at distances of less than 30 light years, or about 180 trillion miles, from the sun.”

There is no bad news. The planets are uninhabited by Russian dictators, Venezuelan strongmen, nutty as a fruitcake wife-beating Salafists, saintly Cuban presidential terrorists looking for yet another international handout,  and American presidents who cannot puttogether a passable budget.